I had hoped to prepare a massive round-up for today, given how many excellent new tracks have been thrown at us this week, and how many fine new things I’ve recently discovered that appeared in previous weeks. Alas, other distractions have prevented me from making this post as gargantuan as I’d hoped. But there’s always tomorrow….
PIG DESTROYER
To begin, I have only a teaser… but what a titillating teaser it is. Continue reading »
If it were possible to do a comprehensive census of metal bands who released their first demo in 1988, we’d undoubtedly find that the vast majority are no longer among the living. The same could be said of metal bands whose first releases were in 1989… or 1990… or just about any other year preceding the current decade. If there were a catacombs for deceased metal bands, it would be filled to overflowing with dried bones and moldy bullet belts. Of course, mere longevity isn’t something that requires celebration: Some bands have survived for a very long time who should have been laid to rest years ago.
And then there is that very small group of long-lived survivors who just continue to slay rather than be slain, who seek neither fame nor fortune, who don’t compromise or sniff hungrily along the trail of trends, and who deserve a lot more credit than they’ve gotten. Which brings us to Sathanas.
They did indeed release their first demo in 1988, and nine albums (plus many shorter releases) since then, and a tenth one is on the way via the band’s new label, the rapidly expanding Transcending Obscurity Records. Necrohymns is the name of the new full-length, and today we’re bringing you another beast of a track off that record — “Throne of Satan” — before which you shall bow down. Continue reading »
(We present DGR’s review of the three-way split between Organ Dealer, Nerve Grind, and Invertebrate, which will be released on July 1st by Arizona-based Night Animal Records.)
Spinning the new 7″ split from the trio of West Coast and East Coast grinders comprising New Jersey’s Organ Dealer, Los Angeles’ Nerve Grind, and Oakland’s Invertebrate is like firing the grind genre into a prism and watching it refract off into three separate directions. It’s easy to see the common object that unites the three bands, but where each one takes things outside of the short-song, burst-of-excitement style of songwriting is what makes this sub-twenty-minute split a whole lot of fun.
Organ Dealer show up with their branch of frenetic and hyperactive grind spread across six songs (fun fact: when added to the material from their split last year with BirdFlesh and the “Insominia Chamer” single, this means the band have now completely cleared the amount of material they put on their 2015 album Visceral Infection). Contrast that with the West Coast tag-team, starting with the three songs of Napalm Death’s long-lost relative, Nerve Grind, the music thick-as-hell and hammering tuned low to the bowels of hell, and Invertebrate closing out the whole affair with another burst of songs, coming across as a slimmer and more punk-rock-leaning branch of the grind tree — leaving just one song “Untitled”, granting a different one the name of “Fuckface”, and from a sheer numbers perspective making up half the track listing with a snappy and teeth-bared nine songs that all keep the run times sub one-minute-thirty. Continue reading »
Given what I’ve planned to write for the site today, I don’t have time to compile the kind of typically large SEEN AND HEARD round-up I’d like to assemble, but enough time to do something shorter. And so I’ve resorted once again to the QUICK HITS concept that ran almost every day for a week not too long ago. Better than nothing, right?
GOJIRA
In August 2010 one of the people who started this site with me, but hasn’t been involved since 2011, wrote a post with this title: “Why Gojira Is the Best Metal Band in the World“. Almost eight years later, I’m pretty sure he still believes that. And after almost eight years that post still gets hits; in terms of traffic, it’s in the all-time Top 5 pages visited on our site.
Eight years ago, that writer was trying to draw more attention to a band that had only toured the U.S. once, as a support band for In Flames, and not even principal support — that position went to All That Remains. Now, of course, Gojira are a global phenomenon, and still have a soul. And In Flames and All That Remains? The less said about them in their current musical incarnations, the better. Continue reading »
(In this post Andy Synn discusses the phenomenon of metal bands releasing remastered or re-recorded versions of older albums, and recommends two recent examples of the practice, by Vader and Hetroertzen.)
For all that we’re supposedly in another “Golden Age” of television, I know there are quite a few people out there (thousands upon thousands of them) who are becoming a little tired of the seemingly constant stream of reboots and remakes of supposedly “classic” (and some not-so-classic) shows from previous eras, under the assumption that some sort of ingrained sense of nostalgia will help sell them more than something like, say, quality writing or a new, interesting premise, would.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of these new versions of older shows are absolutely fantastic, and benefit greatly not only from the new and improved technology of today, but also a greater freedom to reimagine things which comes from a more modern idea of what television can be, when given the chance to do more than simply entertain. It’s just that, as you might expect, the number of lazy remakes vastly outweighs the more creative ones.
The same sort of thing goes on in the music world too, particularly in the Rock/Metal world, where artists with long-running, wide-ranging careers often feel the need to at least remaster, if not entirely re-record, material from their early days, if only because they feel that the technology or budget available to them at the time simply wasn’t sufficient to allow them to properly capture what they were really trying to convey.
And, let me tell you… I’m not entirely against this process. Continue reading »
I wasn’t able to post a SHADES OF BLACK column or anything else yesterday, but fear not, all is well here in NCS land; I was just wholly consumed all weekend with activities related to my fucking day job, almost all of them quite pleasurable but nevertheless not conducive to my listening to new music or writing about it. I did manage to go through some of the songs on my ever-burgeoning list of new releases last night, and what follows are the ones I chose to recommend on this Monday morning.
I also have in mind presenting a collection of three new EPs that made an impression while I was listening last night. Don’t know if I can pull that off today, but I do know that before the day is out we’ll have a review of Craft’s new album and premieres of two other albums that I’m confident you’ll enjoy.
ALLFATHER
My colleague Andy Synn gave quite a positive review to the debut album by UK’s Allfather in 2016, which concluded as follows: Continue reading »
As was also the situation on Wednesday, when I posted the last round-up before this one, I’m feeling hurried. Too much stuff going on in the fragments of life that aren’t devoted to NCS. But even though I don’t have time to cogently explain just how much I like the music I’ve chosen for this collection, and why, I didn’t want the week to end without putting more new music before you. (And of course we will have more for you this weekend as well.) So, without further ado, and without many complete sentences, let’s begin…
INNUMERABLE FORMS
…slow, titanic, teeth-loosening heaviness… a groaning melody that bespeaks utter soul-shattering misery… a monstrous voice that roars from an ice-cold void… and in the middle it becomes a rumbling, thundering, bone-snapping tank attack with a delicious solo (and there’s one more ravaging assault at the end)… This is “Punishment In Flesh“. Continue reading »
Label samplers and other compilations are great ideas, especially compilations like the two recent offerings that I’m writing about in this post, which are available through Bandcamp for a price you pick for yourself. Between the two of them, they deliver 33 songs.
Apart from the obvious attraction of substantial playlists of music that you can pick up for free, or whatever your resources will allow you to contribute, samplers such as these provide an introduction to bands you might never have heard before (in addition to bands who’ve already made names for themselves that most of you will know of). I’m very glad I spotted alerts about them within the vast sea of dreck that is the NCS in-box.
LES ACTEURS DE L’OMBRE PRODUCTIONS: SAMPLER MMXVIII
I haven’t tried to manually count how many releases I’ve written about and recommended over the years from the French label Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions, but a word-search of our database turns up 17 of them. That number probably should have been larger, but there are only so many hours in the day. Suffice it to say that LADLO has good taste, which is to say that what tastes good to them almost always tastes good to me. The label is run by volunteers, they tend to focus on black metal, and they tend to focus on French bands, but not exclusively so. Continue reading »
I’m in a hurry at the moment, with barely enough time to throw these five new songs and videos at you along with some basic background info, but not enough minutes to provide my usual introductory impressions. Enjoy the music — I sure as hell did.
POUND
The Seattle duo Pound (who used to go by Lb!) have turned in some of the most electrifying live performances I’ve seen here in the Pacific Northwest. The sights and sounds of guitarist Ryan Schutte delivering a tornado of chaos and groove on a baritone 9-string guitar while David Stickney switches back and forth between two drum kits in riveting displays of percussive vulcanism is the kind of mind-blowing experience I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of. (You’ll get an idea of that experience in the second video below, but without the bowel-liquefying volume that comes in a live Pound performance.) Continue reading »
As you can see, I decided to shift away from last week’s almost daily “Quick Hits” round-ups of new music and back to the longer compilations, though I’m still doing a bit of catching up on tracks that are now a week or two old. I might still break out the Quick Hits moniker every now and then, when I don’t have time to do more than throw a couple of songs your way.
P.S. Just as I was finishing this post I saw that Abhorrence premiered their first new track in 28 years at DECIBEL, and that Ván Records just revealed a track from the new album by the Irish black metal band Slidhr (with with Garðar S Jónsson of Sinmara and Almyrkvi taking the reins as bassist), which can be streamed HERE. I haven’t listened to either of these yet, but I bet they’ll be well worth your time. (Thanks to HGD for pointing me to both.)
MUTILATION RITES
“Pierced Larynx” is such a goddamned good head-banger, and a ridiculously addictive one, too. It comes from the new album by Mutilation Rites, whose music seems to be continually evolving, if one were to judge by “Pierced Larynx”. Their line-up has evolved, too, and now includes drummer Tyler Coburn (Yautja, Alraune), along with bassist/vocalist Ryan Jones, guitarist/vocalist George Paul, and guitarist Michael Dimmitt. Continue reading »