OVERFLOWING STREAMS: LANTERN, INEXORUM, KHTHONIIK CERVIIKS, NEW HELL, OBSCENE, NADIR, NEMESIUM, WHERE’S MY BIBLE, MORA PROKAZA, C TRIP A, TALE OF TWO

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
May 012020
 

 

In making my way through the continuing flood of new music over the last 36 hours I hit a stretch of high-energy, technically impressive music with pronounced melodies, albeit with a lot of different embellishments and stylistic intersections (most involving elements of death and black metal). I decided to put those together here, and then veered way off the rails at the end with a trio of songs that make me smile when I imagine your reactions.

LANTERN (Finland)

To begin, let’s consider “Strange Nebula“. You won’t need a telescope, merely your ears and an open mind. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: BELL WITCH/AERIAL RUIN, ENTARTUNG

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Apr 292020
 

 

This would have been a good day for an OVERFLOWING STREAMS post, because there’s a great volume of new music I’d like to recommend. But there wasn’t time for that. As a fall-back, it would have been a good day for a SEEN AND HEARD post, with fewer offerings but more elaborate words. But no time for that either. So as a last resort, because I wanted to recommend something today beyond what we’ve already posted, I’ve resorted to a format that is painfully short on music.

The title of the post, by the way, doesn’t mean that the two tracks I’ve chosen are quick ones, only that I’ve had to be quick about putting this together. I do think both songs are fantastic, and go together well.

BELL WITCH / AERIAL RUIN

Stygian Bough Volume I is the name of a new collaborative album by the Pacific Northwest bands Bell Witch (Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman) and Aerial Ruin (Erik Moggridge). These three have collaborated before, both on recordings and on stage, but not in this way. Here, they have composed and performed all five songs on the album as a trio. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: REBEL WIZARD, (0), PATRONS OF THE ROTTING GATE, WIRED ANXIETY

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Apr 252020
 


Rebel Wizard

 

My habit for a long time has been to stop posting things at NCS by around noon here in the Pacific time zone. At that point it’s getting into the late-night hours in Europe, where about half of our daily traffic comes from, and I usually need chunks of the afternoon to deal with work and personal business. But after sleeping for 10 hours last night and waking up much later than usual today, and then having to spend even more time getting my foggy head moderately clear, most of the morning was already gone.

I knew I wouldn’t get this post finished by noon — hell, I didn’t even start writing it until noon. But I thought, fuck it, if that noon-deadline rule comes from nowhere other than inside my own head, I can break it if I want to, even if a lot of people won’t see this until sometime Sunday.

The three Zoom happy hours I participated in yesterday, which began in the afternoon and went late into the night, prevented me from listening to any new music. And because I got such a late start this morning, I didn’t spend much time going through my list today either. But it was enough time to find and become satisfied with the following choices. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 3): SLAGHEAD, THEMS THAT WAIT, ULTHAR, WIKING1940

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Apr 242020
 

 

Here we come to the end of this alphabetized selection of new music from a dozen bands that I began yesterday with Part 1 and Part 2. Of course the flow of new metal didn’t stop after I picked these 12 earlier in the week, so it will soon be time to start over.

Because this is Friday, with three Zoom happy hours on my calendar, it will also soon be time to see how well I learned my lesson from last week, i.e., that if you drink for 7 hours straight on Friday night, Saturday will be a vast wasteland. But while I’m still able to write semi-coherently, let’s finish this round-up:

SLAGHEAD (U.S.)

“Resolving Origin” is a single released on April 20 by the band Slaghead from Hampton, Virginia. Per the band, it’s “a song about how to use rabies and car crashes to travel in time and become a God (do not try this at home)”. I’m not sure I would have interpreted the lyrics that way without insight from the band, but regardless, the lyrics are great — and you should go read them at Bandcamp on the way to buying this single (for one U.S. dollar or more) — because it’s well worth having on your hard drive. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): THE PATH OF MEMORY, A PREGNANT LIGHT, PURTENANCE, RESENT

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Apr 232020
 


The Path of Memory

 

On we go with today’s three-part mega-roundup, though it’s already late enough in our posting day that Part 3 will slip over into tomorrow.

As explained in Part 1, I alphabetized what I picked by band name, so we’re rolling on into the Ps and Rs in this segment (and in case you’re confused, I’m following the Chicago Manual of Style rules for alphabetization, in which introductory articles such as “a”, “an”, and “the” are disregarded).

THE PATH OF MEMORY (Switzerland)

The shimmering melodies in “Rancid Song” sound despairing, but that effect may also have something to do with the deep gothic vocals and the moody bass notes. The music is also haunting in its atmosphere, but don’t be misled — the slow-rocking, hard-hitting rhythms and that big bass tone will get you moving. A soundtrack for wandering alone, lost in gloomy memories, through vacant city streets lined with tall cold steel…. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): DEVIL WITH NO NAME, THE FUNERAL ORCHESTRA, MEGAKILL PARANOISE, MISANTHROPIC AGGRESSION

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Apr 232020
 


Devil With No Name

 

I compiled this round-up three days ago. Different things prevented me from posting it until today, including distractions from my day job, bad things happening to people close to me, and just the general malaise I’m feeling under the current awful circumstances we’re all living with. A lot of other new music has emerged since I originally chose these songs, but I’m not going to sacrifice more time by trying to figure out what to add and what to drop.

The list consists of music from a dozen bands. I alphabetized them and divided this into three parts, four bands in each one. I have some other posts to finish for today, so these won’t roll out one after another. There’s always the chance I won’t even get all three parts up on the site today. The same factors that delayed this roll-out haven’t gone away.

All of us here hope all of you are well and safe, and that you’ll find something to like in this round-up. Continue reading »

HAIL SPIRIT NOIR: “THE FIRST APE ON NEW EARTH”

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Apr 212020
 

 

We have a lot of things planned for today at our site, including an album review, a couple of premieres, and a gigantic round-up of new music, but I’m getting a slow start on readying any of those posts for publication. But then I saw that Hail Spirit Noir had revealed the first excerpt from their new album, and that solved the problem of how to begin the day without further delay.

We don’t usually feature only one new song in a post unless it’s a premiere, but our affection for this Greek band runs deep, as does curiosity about what this new album will sound like, given the fascinating shifts in style that have already occurred over the course of Pneuma (2012), Oi Magoi (2014), and Mayhem In Blue (2016). Of course, as the band’s first three albums have already proven, one song drawn in isolation from the rest of an HSN release doesn’t completely represent what the rest of the record will sound like, because the band have an adventurous streak in them.

But beyond what can be gleaned from the new song that debuted today (“The First Ape On New Earth“), we do have this accompanying statement by the band about the album, the title of which is Eden In Reverse: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IMPAVIDA — “GRAM”

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Apr 172020
 

 

On May 8th Prophecy Productions will release a stunning album-length split by two formidable atmospheric black metal bands, the Dutch trio Vuur & Zijde (“fire and silk”), which features members of Laster, Nusquama and Terzij de Horde, and the enigmatic duo, one German and one American, who call themselves Impavida .

The three songs by Vuur & Zijde mark the recording debut of this new formation, while the two tracks by Impavida add to a discography that includes two full-lengths on Ván Records since 2008, the most recent of which (the astonishing Antipode) we premiered and reviewed here last year.

What we have for you today is the premiere of one of Impavida‘s two songs, one named “Gram“, as well as an impressionistic linguistic preview of what the band’s monumental second track holds in store for you (at a later time we’ll have something to say about the music of Vuur & Zijde). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: REJOICE! THE LIGHT HAS COME, MICO, VOID PRAYER, KALL, INTEGRAL RIGOR

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Apr 162020
 

 

I hope all of you are well and staying safe and neither lapsing into stupor nor pulling our your hair due to quarantine-itis. I have chosen a few things to occupy your mind today, since you probably have more unoccupied mind than usual these days. To fill the vacancy I’ve selected a new EP, an assortment of recent advance tracks from forthcoming releases, and a new single. As is often the case, I owe thanks to a couple of trusted advisors for many of these choices.

REJOICE! THE LIGHT HAS COME

This is the (untitled) EP mentioned above. It was released on April 12th by a West Virginia-based band whose recording line-up for the EP also included a couple of well-known session performers (at least I assume they aren’t permanent members) — Colin Marston on bass (he also mixed and mastered the record) and drummer Kevin Paradis — in addition to guitarists Eric Gill and Dan Long and vocalist Paul Ozz, all of whom are also members of Aghasura. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: OIL SPILL, PROTOSEQUENCE, CENTINEX, DEVANGELIC, SMOKE & MIRRORS, VARAHA, HORN, CAULDRON BLACK RAM, LORD MANTIS, THE LIFTED VEIL

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 152020
 

 

For today’s mega round-up of new songs and videos I decided not to alphabetize everything as I’ve been doing. Instead, I’ve created five pairs of songs. By sheer good fortune, as I continued to hack my way through an ever-burgeoning listening list, I not only discovered these 10 things but found that they could be organized in this way. The songs in each pair aren’t completely similar to each other by any means, but they do share certain qualities that made them fit together nicely (at least to my addled mind).

OIL SPILL (U.S.)

Felicitously, I discovered quotations from others about this new EP by the Texas band Oil Spill that seemed quite fitting, and they had the side benefit of saving me a bit of work in coming up with my own verbiage. These two are from commenters on the EP’s Bandcamp page: Continue reading »

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