SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PORTAL, REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER, MOROKH, THIS ENDING, MORTUARY SPAWN, NADJA, ALUSTRIUM, BEAST MODE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 242021
 

 

Because I got a late start on the day and have a lot of personal shit to attend to, my original plan was just to pick a couple or three songs and make this an abbreviated round-up. But I kept coming across tracks and videos that I really wanted to share, so this collection mushroomed.

It also amused me, as it often does, to build in some stylistic whiplash, particularly in the arrangement of the last half of these picks. Hope you find something here that will make your day a better one.

PORTAL (Australia)

I probably overlooked one or more news missives, but I wasn’t aware until yesterday that Portal had a new album on the way. When I discovered that fact, it produced the kind of a blood-congealing yet spine-tingling experience I usually have when wondering what new horrors will be headed our way from this band. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DÖDSRIT, ANGSTSKRÍG, YOUR FAULT, GHOSTBOUND, UNENDLICH, HAGEL, GOATBLOOD

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 222021
 

 

If extreme metal were a big map pinned to a wall and you got a running start and hurled the contents of a bucket of paint at it, the scattered blots would give you something like the following collection of songs and videos — though one of the splashes lands off the map altogether (I put that one dead center in this playlist, surrounded by everything else).

DÖDSRIT (Netherlands/Sweden)

I’m leading off with “Shallow Graves“, because it so thoroughly swept me off my feet right from the start, thanks to the thrill of its opening riff, the pulse-pounding impact of the racing drums, and the grandeur of the panoramic cascades. The song changes, moving through a variety of rhythms and tempos as well as variations in the riffing that alters the moods, though the vocals are blisteringly intense at all times. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AN AUTUMN FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN, THY CATAFALQUE, AKIAVEL, SIDEREAN, VIOLATED GRAVE, [4672], WINTER ETERNAL

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Apr 172021
 

 

Roadburn Redux is going on right now. It should be a “must watch, must listen” event for me (and for you), but I’ve had too many distractions the last few days to glue myself to my computer and take it all in. Sadly, I can’t do that this weekend either. All I’ve done so far is to check out a few songs and videos, and I’ve included two of those (which were premieres) at the front of today’s round-up — along with a bunch of other good stuff I discovered over the last 24 hours.

To see the full line-up of events at Roadburn Redux go HERE. You’ll see that it includes both live and pre-recorded music, some of it full sets and some of it individual songs and videos, including premieres. You’ll also see that if you have missed something, the streams and videos will remain on-line at the Redux site until the evening of April 20th.

AN AUTUMN FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN (Netherlands)

Next month this excellent Dutch band will release their ninth album, As The Morning Dawns We Close Our Eyes. At Roadburn Redux they premiered one of its songs along with a video for it. That song, “Melancholia“, is true to its name in some of its moods (which have a wistful quality) — but the rambunctiousness of the rhythm section, the vibrancy of the gleaming guitar harmonies, and the soaring brilliance in the high end are bursting with life (and the strangled harshness of the vocals are vicious). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER, ΛΔΛΜ, ANHARAT, GO AHEAD AND DIE, CHADHEL, TOOTH AND CLAW

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Apr 162021
 

 

Since we’ve only had two posts today, and because I found myself with a little extra time this morning, I decided to get a head-start on the usual Saturday round-up of new songs and videos. As is sometimes the case, there’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to why I chose the following items, and there’s a risk of whiplash as you make your way from one to the next. There’s also a greater-than-usual percentage of videos included here — I think they’re all very good in different ways.

I will come back later when I have a bit more time and add the rest of the usual artwork and links.

DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER (Germany)

Savage, crazed, blazing, and viscerally propulsive in its tribal rhythms — those are the immediate impressions of this first song, though I must admit that the wild and transfixing video that accompanies the song is a big reason why I picked it. It suits the music supremely well. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): SPECTRAL LORE, DEMERSUS AD NIHILUM, KAFIRUN, OMEGA

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Apr 142021
 

 

Although there wasn’t much rhyme or reason to the musical parameters of Part 1 of today’s roundup, Part 2 is a little more coherent since it uniformly leans into black metal. However, to suggest that these four songs follow a consistent pattern would be wrong — each one sounds very different from the rest.

SPECTRAL LORE (Greece)

My first choice is “Φονικό Φως (Murderous Light)“, which surfaced as a digital single on Bandcamp yesterday. It was originally written for and released as part of Art Against Censorship, a compilation of 36 songs from Greek musicians to protest a law that was intended to target and silence radical political artists.

That comp was released in February of this year as a free download (here), and I managed to overlook it. It obviously includes a ton of music, and most of it is from bands whose names I don’t recognize, so one benefit of Spectral Lore‘s single will be to help draw attention to it. (I’m not surprised to see a Yovel song at the close of the comp.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT, DANNY ELFMAN, HIRAES, GABESTOK

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 142021
 

 

I found time last night to rumble through a lot of new or newly discovered music, and enough time today to stitch together a two-part round-up. There’s not much rhyme or reason as to why I put these first four in Part 1, because the music is kind of all over the map. It would have been even more hard-to-classify if I’d included Mick Jagger‘s new jam with Dave Grohl, which I do like despite the silliness of the lyrics.

THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT (Netherlands)

Having finally listened to “Gone Sour, Doomed” and watched the video that accompanied it when it debuted in February, I’m even more befuddled about why it took me so long to do that. I can’t pretend to hold all the songs of The Monolith Deathcult in my head, despite how memorable many of them are, but I will still say that this new one is among the most exhilarating they’ve ever concocted. And the video is HIGHLY entertaining, and proof that the band’s renowned sense of humor is still alive and well. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHAMAEL — “MELANCHOLIE DER ENGEL”

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Apr 132021
 

 

What we have for you here is a first listen to the entirety of Melancholie Der Engel, the debut album by the Italian atmospheric funeral doom project Shamael in advance of its joint release on April 15th by Satanath Records (Russia) and Negre PlanY (Spain).

In crafting this record (during the pandemic) the solo artist behind Shamael, Raffaele Galasso (a member of Gardenjia and Nightcrush) has not broken any molds, but he didn’t need to. The album is so immaculately executed that it’s a monumental achievement despite its adherence to so many familiar tropes of the genre. In its amalgam of sounds it’s ethereal and pulverizing, mystical and ruinous, haunting and harrowing, shattering and spellbinding. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: INFERNO, WITHERED, CIRCLE OF SIGHS, SEPUTUS, KOSMODEMONIC, HUNDRED HEADLESS HORSEMEN, GADGET, CVLT OV THE SVN

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Apr 102021
 

 

I made the choices for this large round-up after a long listening session on Wednesday, with the idea of writing it up and posting it the next day. But we had so many other things to post that day and Friday that I deferred. Of course, in the meantime a lot of other worthy new songs and videos surfaced, but I decided to just stick with these selections rather than go back to the drawing board, which would have taxed my already over-taxed brain.

I couldn’t really figure out a good way to organize these songs, though I think I picked most of them because they have a through-line of being unsettling and mind-bending, albeit in different ways. I did include a bit of a curveball at the end.

INFERNO (Czechia)

As I wrote here only a week ago, I was blown away by the first advance track from Inferno’s new album, Paradeigma (Phosphenes of Aphotic Eternity), which will be released by Debemur Morti Productions on May 7th. Given the prodigious power of this band’s previous output (which now encompasses a quarter-century of releases), I can’t say I was surprised, but I was still bowled over. And now it has happened again. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: APHONIC THRENODY — “CHAPEL OF THE DEAD”

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Apr 072021
 

 

Margaret Renkl wrote two days ago in The New York Times, in an essay about poetry: “[I]sn’t our own impermanence the undisputed truth that lurks beneath all our fears and all our sorrows and even all our pleasures?… Carpe diem is the song the poets have ever sung, and it is our song, too”. And then she quotes lines from “The Kingfisher” by the late, great Mary Oliver: “I think this is / the prettiest world — so long as you don’t mind / a little dying.”

Ah, but as Hamlet mused, there’s the rub: There’s always the dying, and we know not what dreams may come in the sleep of death, or if any will. Which brings us to the musings of vocalist Daniel Neagoe that accompany the new album by the funeral doom masters Aphonic Threnody, The All Consuming Void:

“There is darkness everywhere, in the serenity of our thoughts, deep encompassed into our very beings, on the endless canvas of our dreams. There is darkness inside the soil beneath our feet and in the heavens above us. A fading, tenebrous gloom enshrouded in suffering and mist, in the coming of time to pass once more guiltless and ignorant. There is a void, all-consuming and ruthless, an emptiness which expands to the very core of our souls, imploding, thundering and monstrous. An impending prophecy that stands the sands of time.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: EREB ALTOR, PERILAXE OCCLUSION, ODAL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Apr 032021
 

 

I’m on a short vacation. First time away from the small community where I live in nine months. Along with a group of family and friends, we made the trip yesterday to an AirBnB on the water in a place called Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, Washington, in the Puget Sound. The photo above was one of the sunset views last night from the deck of this rental.

I had originally decided not to do any blogging this weekend, but I was awake this morning so much earlier than anyone else in the house that I started listening to a few new songs, and here I am blogging again. It’s just three new songs, so that’s a compromise of sorts.

I’m not sure if I’ll write a SHADES OF BLACK column for tomorrow. We’ll be headed home on Monday morning. Continue reading »

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