SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: REBEL WIZARD, KÖRGULL THE EXTERMINATOR, INFESTICIDE, UNDEAD, BULL ELEPHANT, VERMILIA

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Jul 112020
 

 

If you’re a fan of Enslaved, Pallbearer, Kataklysm, Black Crown Initiate, Oceans of Slumber, surely you know about the new singles they released over the last few days from their next albums (most with videos), and if you didn’t know, now you do (just follow those hyperlinks to listen and watch). You probably also saw the announcement of a new Napalm Death album and Decibel’s “Get Behind the Mask” feature with photos of 140 masked-up artists.

But rather than provide commentary about those widely touted events I decided to turn my piggish snout toward the sniffing out of truffles your own snouts might not have detected yet, which is mainly how we use our olfactory organs at NCS.

REBEL WIZARD

Rebel Wizard‘s new album Magickal Mystical Indifference was just released yesterday by Prosthetic Records, and to celebrate the occasion they’ve also just released a colorful, metal AF new video (made by Exotic Corpse) for an album track named “raiseth up all those that be bowed down“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THEOTOXIN, PESTILENGTH, TOMORROW’S RAIN, MHLS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 102020
 

 

Here’s another short round-up of songs and videos as a way of wrapping up our posts for this week. I have in mind another one for Saturday.

THEOTOXIN

This first video has it all — flashing images of swarming maggots, snakes, death in the insect kingdom, human and goat skulls, stone tombs, abundant torches and candles, skies ripped by lightning, and a masked and corpse-painted band ripping through their song in a cavern. It’s missing a human sacrifice, but we shouldn’t be greedy. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ALEYNMORD, SVALBARD, EXITIUM SUI, STONEBIRDS, CARNATION

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 092020
 

 

Despite my new-found strategy of limiting the volume of these round-ups in order to do more of them each week, I found enough time to include new music from five bands in this one. The new stuff I picked for today’s collection based on an early-morning listening session begins with two excellent Jakub Moth videos for a couple of dramatically impassioned songs, and the mood stays serious and intense for the two tracks after that. And then I decided to wrap things up with some good old death metal via Antwerp that’s just plain evil fun.

ALEYNMORD

The first song I picked is a track off the debut album of the wilderness-worshiping Oregonian duo Aleynmord. The album’s name is The Blinding Light, and it’s packaged with cover art by Jef Whitehead. As noted above, Chariot of the Black Moth created the beautifully haunting video for the track. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HAVUKRUUNU, SILVER KNIFE, HINAYANA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Jul 072020
 

 

Those of us who form the core staff at NCS have recently been reconsidering lots of the things we do here and how we do them. To be more precise, much of the discussion has involved what I do here and how I do them. A lot of the discussion boils down to being more selective in what we publish, and more willing to publish fewer posts every day if that’s necessary to make greater scrutiny possible.

One likely outcome of those discussions is that I will accept fewer premieres. For a while now I’ve been writing two or more premieres every day. I only agree to premiere music that I like and that I think fits the musical focus of the site, but that still leads to lots of premieres. I admit that I have a hard time saying no. One consequence of so many premieres is that I have much less time to write about music that I find on my own, including round-ups of new music and stand-alone reviews of records that we’re not premiering.

Because I’ve put myself in the position of not being able to write round-ups as often as I’d like, the backlogs grow to gargantuan proportions. I resort to gigantic Overflowing Streams collections in an effort to work through the backlogs, but even that format (in which I cut back on my own verbiage) takes time to put together, and so I wind up not even publishing those kinds of collections more than once a week (if I can even manage that).

This process of discussion and self-reflection has led me to realize another problem I’ve created for myself. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SCHATTENFALL — “EINSAMKEIT”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 062020
 

 

We’ve been attentively following the progress of the German atmospheric black metal band Schattenfall since their first release in 2017, a debut album named Schatten in Schwarz. That album made a stunning first impression, but perhaps even more stunning was the band’s second album, 2019’s Melancholie des Seins, which our Andy Synn acclaimed in his review here as “equal parts haunting beauty and brooding melancholy,” presenting manifestations of “gloriously melodic misery” that were “second to none”.

Schattenfall followed that album with their Das Verderben EP in February of this year, and it proved again the band’s formidable talent for creating music that leaves lasting impressions. It was spellbinding but also capable of jolting ferocity and shattering emotional force.

And now it’s our pleasure to present a full stream of Schattenfall’s latest work, an instrumental EP entitled Einsamkeit that’s set for release on July 13th. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): ADORA VIVOS, AMIENSUS, BLACK FUNERAL, CONVOCATION, DAUÞUZ, LANTERN, OSSARIO, PAYSAGE D’HIVER, PILORI, UTZALU

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jul 032020
 

 

I’m mindful of the fact that today Bandcamp is waiving its revenue share, which means that more of the money you throw at Bandcamp releases today will land in the pockets of bands and labels. So I’m trying to make a lot of recommendations, many of which were included in Part 1 of this post. But I’m also mindful of the fact that time is running out. And so although this Part 2 of today’s collection consists of complete releases rather than individual songs, I’m not attempting anything close to reviews, just a few words of description and recommendation.

Needless to say, there are dozens of other recent releases I could have included here (2020 has been ridiculously strong for metal, IMO), so there’s more than a bit of randomness in the choices I made. Nevertheless, I back each of these wholeheartedly. (I should add that this collection is heavy on the black and blackened metal, because that’s where I’ve spent a lot of my recent listening time.)

ADORA VIVOS / AMIENSUS  (U.S.)

A beautiful and ravishing split that includes not only a great Amiensus song but also the magnificent return of Adora Vivos after a 7-year silence, a band that includes former Amiensus multi-instrumentalist J. Waller (on both Restoration and Ascension) and Amiensus vocalist/guitarist James Benson. This one won’t leave you the same way it found you. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): ARS MAGNA UMBRAE, ATRAMENTUS, BEDSORE, DAWN OF A DARK AGE, THE INFERNAL SEA, MYRIDIAN, THE OCEAN, PSYCROPTIC, WARATHRON, VOID ROT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 032020
 


Ars Magna Umbrae

 

This is a great day for metal fans to support bands with their money. It’s a harrowing day for metal bloggers like myself.

It’s a great day because Bandcamp is again waiving its share of revenues from sales on its site, which means more money generated from purchases and donations goes directly to bands and labels, some of whom are in turn donating proceeds to charitable causes.

It’s a harrowing day because bands and labels have been releasing a HUMONGOUS AMOUNT OF MUSIC to take advantage of the occasion. Beginning yesterday and continuing today, my in-box has exploded with Bandcamp alerts and press releases, and that’s on top of the usual flood of other new music appearing earlier in the week. There’s no way I can sample all of it. But I’ve sampled some of it, and you see the results in this post — or at least some of them.

What I’ve done here is to collect individual songs and videos for new releases (and a few older ones), arranged in alphabetical order by band name. Many of those releases, but not all, can be purchased or pre-ordered on Bandcamp to take advantage of the revenue-share waiver. In Part 2 I’ll quickly throw out recommendations for complete new releases that would also be good candidates for your Bandcamp purchases. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): CIRKELN, FACELESS BURIAL, FULL OF HELL, GNOSTIC GORILLA, GRAVE SUPERIOR, INGESTED, SHITANGEL, UMBRA VITAE, VENOM PRISON, VOLTURYON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 272020
 

 

This is a follow-on to another gigantic round-up I posted yesterday, and almost all of the songs and videos below were released during the last five days.

I may have mentioned that although my day-job (which still hasn’t reopened) is in Seattle, I live on an island in Puget Sound. Living here has lots of pluses and a few minuses, one of which is that whenever one of the weather gods so much as sneezes the power and the internet go out, which is what happened this morning.

So, I’ve been using my phone as a hot spot. That has slowed me down, and has made doing this tedious enough that I’ve not only cut back on my words but also largely left these items without the usual purchase links, Facebook pages, and other info about the records. I’ll try to go back and fill all that in when doing it is a less annoying process.

CIRKELN (Sweden)

An epic musical narrative, both gloom shrouded and frenzied, melancholy and murderous, haunting and majestic. Seemingly a Tolkein-esque tale told by an orc bred in the subterranean halls of Utumno and raging against his enslavement, the dramatic song blends numerous heavy metal styles to very good effect. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ANOPHELI, CIRCLE OF SIGHS, DRAUGABLIKK, HYPERDONTIA, INCANTATION, JUPITERIAN, KATASTAH, OTTONE PESANTE, SIEGE COLUMN, VOIDOATH

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jun 262020
 

 

On Sunday I mentioned that I had a big block of time over the weekend that I was able to spend listening to new music. Almost everything I’ve selected for the following set of recommendations came out of that listening session. I resisted the impulse to replace a lot of those selections with things that came out this week, but I did add three of the tracks that surfaced during this week. Hopefully I’ll get to more of those in tomorrow’s round-up. The music today is presented in alphabetical order by band name.

ANOPHELI (U.S.)

I’m starting with something that’s not entirely new. It’s a debut album by Anopheli from Oakland, California (and other places), that was originally released in 2o15 (and I wrote about it here at that time). But the band had the album re-mastered by the same man who mastered the original release — the veteran producer Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden. He explained the changes: “”Things to listen for. It’s less overloaded and everything is more articulate. The overall low end is deeper, the high end is clearer. The drums snap better and interfere less with the other instruments.” Continue reading »

WEARING A MASK DOES NOT MAKE YOU OPPRESSED PLAYLIST (BY NEILL JAMESON)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 232020
 

 

(So far, Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood) has shared with us (here,  here, and here) three playlists of musical suggestions to help us get through the current plague time, and today he follows those with a fourth selection.)

As I said before, I wanted to do four of these things, with the intent that they would help people stuck indoors find something new to listen to and to help the artists involved since our world was basically put on ice for a bit.

Through the first three of these it seemed, for the most part, that people were being responsible and doing their part to get through this shit as painlessly as possible. But, this is America and people somehow think every small inconvenience is an affront to their freedom. And our fine fellow citizens seem happy to protest science like it’s a goddamned wizard’s spellbook and raise their concerns until something actually happens worth raising a ruckus for, but seems a lot of the same people bitching that a mask somehow makes them less free button the fuck up. Continue reading »

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