QUICK HITS: DEVOURING STAR, CEMETERY LUST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 142018
 

 

As explained previously, I’ve been trying to catch up on a lot of new songs that appeared over the last couple of weeks when I wasn’t able to write about due to an assortment of distractions from my NCS duties. In lieu of the usual longer SEEN AND HEARD round-ups, I’ve been posting shorter two-track collections, with the goal of doing them on a daily basis. Yesterday I missed the mark because I had three premieres to write. To make up for that, I’ll post two of these Quick Hits installments today.

DEVOURING STAR

On June 1, Bardo Methodology published an interview with the man behind Finland’s Devouring Star, which began as a solo project but now includes a drummer — who is an eye-popping talent in his own right, as you will hear.

Like almost every interview I’ve encountered through Bardo Methodology, this one is very interesting and informative on subjects that go well beyond the composition and performance of extreme music. Accompanying the interview was the exclusive premiere of a track from Devouring Star’s new album, The Arteries of Heresy, and as of yesterday the song has become available for direct streaming on Bandcamp, which reminded me that I hadn’t yet mentioned the song here. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WITH THE END IN MIND — “ANGUISH SYMMETRY”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 132018
 

 

On July 6th Temple of Tortruous Records will provide a vinyl and digital release of the debut album by the one-man project With The End In Mind, from Olympia, Washington. The nearly hour-long album consists of five tracks, all but one of which (the title track) are of substantial length, the songs united by their creator’s reverence for the manifold forms of life around us and a torment born from the threat of humankind’s ever-escalating destructive tendencies.

“Anguish Symmetry” is the album’s second track, one that reaches nearly 14 minutes in length. Over its changing course it proves to be a dynamic and mood-changing experience, blending black metal and post-metal (as well as other ingredients) in ways that give the song vibrant emotional force and enthralling power. Agony and rapture are manifest in the sounds, as are sensations of sorrowing introspection and otherworldly grandeur. It has the ability to drive you inward and to take you out of yourself and into realms that don’t seem quite real. Continue reading »

DEATHSTORM: “THE UNFATHOMABLE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 132018
 

 

(This is Andy Synn’s review of the recently released new album by the Polish death metal band Deathstorm.)

Let’s be honest about something, shall we? For all that we might claim to love music which is progressive and challenging and which seeks to push the envelope, sometimes we just need to hear something which grabs us by the balls through the virtue of its sheer, unapologetic heaviness alone.

Sometimes, we need a Deathstorm. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: DEATHCODE SOCIETY, KORPIKLAANI

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 112018
 

 

A whole three days in a row I’ve now managed to follow through with the plan of posting small two-track collections of new music I want to recommend. I’m finding this much easier to do than the larger SEEN AND HEARD collections I usually succeed in posting only once a week — first, because I don’t agonize as much over the choices, knowing that I can make some more from my list the very next day; and second, because it takes less time to scribble words about two songs rather than five or six.

Maybe this little project is less daunting and more inviting to readers as well since it’s not such a big wall of music to confront? Just a guess.

DEATHCODE SOCIETY

I was wondering what had happened to this French symphonic black metal band. Actually, I wasn’t. I don’t really lie awake at night going through a mental list of bands who haven’t released any new music for a few years. More accurately, it dawned on me when I saw news about a new album that almost three years have passed since Deathcode Society released their fine debut full-length Eschatonizer (which you should definitely check out HERE if you haven’t already). Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: DRAGHKAR AND SCULPTURE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 102018
 

 

As explained yesterday, I’m trying to catch up on a lot of new songs that have appeared over the last couple of weeks that I wasn’t able to write about due to an assortment of distractions from my NCS duties. In lieu of the usual longer SEEN AND HEARD round-ups, I’m attempting to post shorter “playlists” on a daily basis for the next week or so. Shortening the collections to two songs per post may increase the odds that I’ll actually follow through on the idea. Getting completely caught up is, of course, an impossibility, in part because the coming days will undoubtedly bring even more new things I’d like to recommend.

DRAGHKAR

The first song I’ve chosen for today is “Swallowed By the Dark“, the first track revealed from The Endless Howling Abyss, which is a new EP by the death-worshipping L.A. trio Draghkar. It’s set for release on July 27 and comes on the heels of a 2017 demo and a split released by Blood Harvest this past April with the Indiana group Desekryptor. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: CROCELL AND NYLITHIA

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 092018
 

 

I feel like a broken record in writing this sentence, but will say again that my list of new songs that have appeared just in the last two weeks, and seem worth checking out, is enormous — more than 50 tracks long at this point. The paucity of SEEN AND HEARD posts over that period, due to the paucity of time I’ve been able to devote to NCS as a result of other distractions, means that the list has grown at a much faster rate than I’ve been able to whittle it down through listening and writing.

So, I came up with an idea for making headway against the tide: Rather than compiling “playlists” of four or five songs (or more) as is usual for the SEEN AND HEARD column, I’m going to spend at least the next week creating much shorter collections, under a new title, limited myself to only two tracks per post. This is the first of those. I hope to do this on a daily basis, but may fail.

CROCELL

Honestly, I’m not sure what happened here. Many of the scribblers at NCS, including me, have been devout fans of Crocell. And yet they came out with their fifth album in March (Relics) and until today we’ve said nothing about it. Having completely overlooked it, I haven’t even heard the record. But this new lyric video will cause me to remedy that glaring omission pretty damned quick. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: ANTAGONY — “END OF THE CIRCLE”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jun 072018
 

 

The video we’re about to premiere provides a bit of history, a bit of nostalgia, and plenty of feral energy that hasn’t lost its punch or power despite the passage of 19 years since the release of the song featured in the video.

The band here is Antagony, a Bay Area group active from 1999-2009, that became one of the pioneers of deathcore, integrating elements of death metal, grind, and hardcore in ways that really hadn’t been done before. Their name may have been eclipsed in popularity by other groups that gained greater prominence, and their continuing progress hobbled by extensive line-up changes, but they’re still remembered to this day by a lot of fans. And their former members went on to form or join such bands as Oblivion, All Shall Perish, Hacksaw to the Throat, Suffokate, Oblige, Misericordiam, Connoisseur, and more.

Last year saw the release through Metal Injection of a 32-minute documentary film about Antagony directed by Brandon Hunt and entitled Dawn of Deathcore, much of it consisting of Antagony performance footage in the Bay Area. What we have for you today is a video for the song “End of Circle” that was bonus footage after the end of the closing credits and hasn’t been previously revealed. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CHURCHBURN, NIHILIFER, THE HOWLING VOID, JOHN MORELAND

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jun 052018
 

 

As mentioned yesterday, I’ve been missing in action at NCS for the better part of the last two weeks, attending one metal festival and helping present a second one. The last of these new music round-ups I was able to prepare came on May 18th. Since then, the flood of new metal has continued unabated rather than politely waiting until I could pay attention again. As a result, there’s perhaps even more than the usual degree of randomness in the following selections.

And speaking of randomness, I decided to include some country music at the end, which I learned about through a conversation on Sunday with Austin Lunn (Panopticon). And since I’ve now dropped his name, maybe you’ll be more likely to give the song a chance.

CHURCHBURN

The dark handiwork of Nestor Avalos adorns the new album by Rhode Island’s Churchburn, the name of which is None Shall Live…The Hymns of Misery. It will be released on July 13 through the Armageddon label. Some new members have joined the band since their last album four years ago, and guest performers appear on the album as well. The first advance track, “The Misery Hymns“, is the song I’ve chosen to lead off today’s playlist. Continue reading »

DUNGEON SYNTH: A LIST BY NEILL JAMESON

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 212018
 

 

(In Part II of his 2017 year-end list for NCS, our friend Neill Jameson (Krieg, Poison Blood) devoted attention to reissues of music from the realms of dungeon synth, but here that genre is the sole focus of the following recommendations.)

 

I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about the various synth subgenres that have popped up all around metal the last few years because they don’t have guitars or whatever excuse you give when confronted with something outside of metal. I know that kept me out of checking a lot of this shit out and gave me a lot of preconceived notions (mostly true when it comes to synthwave). I’ve been a longtime devotee of early (now Era 1) Mortiis but around the time he decided to try different genre pastures I was burned out by overly symphonic and honestly overly fucking melodramatic dark ambient and really only revisited the more ambient side of things when I put on old Mortiis records or if some black metal band had a good instrumental track (i.e., Lugubrum’s earlier stuff — totally underrated and mandatory band). That was until I listened to Old Tower out of curiosity, which caused a twelve-month binge on dungeon synth. I tend to obsess over these kinds of things and dungeon synth is a genre that’s constantly expanding so I always have something to check out. Like most genres, I don’t like 75% of it but what I do like, I really dig into.

Anyway thanks for sticking around for that needless exposition. The cliff notes version for anyone wanting to skip ahead is here’s another list I’ve submitted, this time with some dungeon synth you might not be too aware of and might be interested in checking out. Unlike most times I make these lists I’d actually love for readers to post suggestions for me to check out.

The best resource I’ve found for the genre is The Dungeon Synth Archives on YouTube, which seems to update every day. I’ve also noticed that Tour De Garde, Hollow Myths, and Out of Season generally knock it out of the park with their releases in the genre, plus Tour De Garde constantly releases black metal of high quality, which is a bonus if you have money to burn on something you won’t hate. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SEAR BLISS, NINE INCH NAILS, NABERUS, LUNAE ORTUS, LESSER GLOW, FLOOD PEAK

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
May 182018
 

 

Yesterday I exercised rare restraint and didn’t attend the annual Syttende Mai parade in Ballard, Washington, reportedly the largest celebration of Norway’s Constitution Day in the U.S. So, instead of doing what I’ve done in past years, i.e., getting pleasantly wasted in the company of hordes of actual and pretend descendants of Norwegian immigrants to the Pacific Northwest, I did what I try to do most nights: I crawled through the slag heap of the NCS in-box and scrolled the endless stream of my FB news feed looking for new music that might be worth sharing.

I added links to more than 20 new songs and videos to my ever-expanding list, most of those from albums or EPs that haven’t yet been released. That’s a sign of how much new metal is revealed every day, and that’s not counting stuff I omitted because I suspected it wouldn’t do anything for me. Then I started listening. Some nights that goes faster than you might think; if something doesn’t grab me pretty fast, I skip past it and move on.

Last night the first six songs I listened to are the first six songs you’ll find in this round-up, heard (and seen) in exactly this order (most of them are presented through music videos). And the last item here is an EP I heard right after those six. I never made it to the rest of the list. Obviously, all of this new music grabbed me — though in very different ways. Because it’s such a broad scattering of genre styles, I’ll be surprised if anyone else likes all of it as much as I do. But you might find at least one thing you like.

SEAR BLISS

I really, really, really like how this Hungarian band have evolved over a career that’s now roughly 25 years old. On the occasion of their last album, 2012’s Eternal Recurrence, Natalie Zed’s review at Angry Metal Guy included some lines that I thought were astute in capturing the band’s accomplishments on that album: Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries