ARKONA: “KHRAM”

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Feb 012018
 

 

(Wil Cifer reviews Khram (“The Temple”), the new album by the Russian metal band Arkona, which was released by Napalm Records on January 19.)

The idea of folk metal is better than the application of it that often emerges in album form. Just when I think I have found folk metal I like, the smoke clears and it’s actually black metal. This band is almost a case study in this conundrum. At last a band who might dismiss the problems I have had with folk metal.

The majority of folk metal bands I have come across over the years play something closer to pirate drinking songs or have too much frolicking in the Shire. I play pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons twice a week and read tons of epic fantasy from, Glen Cook to Erickson, so I am the target audience for this kind of music.

But all of these frolicking shanties are too happy, and I need my metal as dark as possible. The ninth album from this Russian band delivers what I need when they do begin to gallop off into the sunset, with moments of majesty contrasted by more dark and heavy passages. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (BY DGR): ROTTING CHRIST, HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY, PSYCHOTIC PULSE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 292018
 

 

(DGR presents the following round-up of new music.)

 

My last appearance with a news roundup was, admittedly, a little ridiculous. I will say, however, that I was not initially aware it had gotten so huge as I just kept adding things that I had noticed we had missed in my vain effort to cover everything I thought the NCS crowd might be interested in.

The nice thing about that method, though, is that the act of doing so with such a large dragnet, combined with the massive three-part Shades Of Black post that went up shortly after, means that we’re able to keep this roundup small, covering just three groups that barely missed the bus when those posts went up. One in particular was released right after the post that was perfect for it went up.

So, we return once again to do a little globe-trotting, skirting around the edges of heavy metal and talking about three more newly released songs that have popped up over the past week and a half. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 3): NECROPHOBIC, THE ATLAS MOTH, THE ABSENCE, SAMAEL, LONG DISTANCE CALLING

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 222018
 


Necrophobic

 

(DGR has stepped into the round-up void left by our editor this past week and has produced a three-part collection of recent songs and videos. Parts 1 and 2 are here and here.)

 

Three weeks into January, and judging by the handful of massive Seen and Heard and Overflowing Streams posts we’ve had to put up, you could say that we’ve managed to the get ourselves into gear as our beloved musical genre has already offloaded numerous news bits upon us in the new year.

I, your ever-faithful servant, have also been doing my best to go along with my ragged fish net and catch everything that might’ve slipped by us — which in the case of this post dates back to last week and then some. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 2): CYNIC, TYRANT OF DEATH, BENIGHTED, IN VAIN, BODY HARVEST

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jan 212018
 


Robert Venosa: “Ayahuasca Dream”

 

(DGR has stepped into the round-up void left by our editor this past week and has produced a three-part collection of recent songs and videos. Parts 1 is here; Part 3 will be presented on Monday.)

 

Three weeks into January, and judging by the handful of massive Seen and Heard and Overflowing Streams posts we’ve had to put up, you could say that we’ve managed to the get ourselves into gear as our beloved musical genre has already offloaded numerous news bits upon us in the new year.

I, your ever-faithful servant, have also been doing my best to go along with my ragged fish net and catch everything that might’ve slipped by us — which in the case of this post dates back to last week and then some. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 1): DAGON, DYSCARNATE, ULCERATE, ALTERBEAST, FEATHER AND BONE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jan 202018
 


Dagon (photo credit: Chuck Marshall)

 

(DGR has stepped into the round-up void left by our editor this past week and has produced a three-part collection of recent songs and videos. Parts 2 and 3 will be presented on Sunday and Monday.)

The first couple weeks of the new year often feel like a machine slowly lurching back to life as people wake up from their respective holiday binges and try their damndest to shake the rust off, kick the tires, and get things back to into gear.

Both the news and the writing fronts often have that same year-opening feeling of machines lurching back into life after a couple weeks of dormancy — in the case of NCS it’s because we buried ourselves in the yearly Listmania event in which numerous lists of albums toppled over each another like the zombie anthills from the World War Z (in name only) film.

Three weeks into January, and judging by the handful of massive Seen and Heard and Overflowing Streams posts we’ve had to put up, you could say that we’ve solved the getting things into gear issue as our beloved musical genre has already offloaded numerous news bits upon us. I, your ever-faithful servant, have been doing my best to go along with my ragged fish net and catch everything that might’ve slipped by us — which in the case of this post dates back to last week and then some. Continue reading »

TRANSCENDING OBSCURITY’S 2018 SAMPLER IS A MEGATON METAL WARHEAD

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jan 172018
 

 

From humble beginnings and a focus on metal releases from Asia, Transcending Obscurity Records has mushroomed like an expanding nuclear blast front into a label with a globe-spanning, genre-spanning roster of very impressive bands. And the latest evidence of that is a 2018 label sampler released through Bandcamp a couple of days ago, which includes tracks from forthcoming releases by 36 bands, most of which haven’t been previously disclosed.

I’ve watched the ambitious growth of the label through a long-distance friendship with the label’s owner Kunal, and through that connection I learned some details about forthcoming T.O. releases that are the source of some of these tracks, and got a sneak peak at some of the cover art as well — which includes creations by such personal favorites as Costin Chioreanu, Juanjo Castellano, and Adam Burke. And speaking of cover art by personal favorites, the sampler artwork created by Misanthropic-Art is excellent.

Here are a few of the art pieces that Kunal previewed for me, beginning with part of Adam Burke’s creation for Imperialist and continuing with Juanjo Castellano’s album art for Eye of Purgatory, and the cover art for Depravity and Sathanas: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MOURNFUL CONGREGATION, HEADS FOR THE DEAD, NATTRAVNEN, GREBER

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jan 162018
 

 

I had originally planned to get a SHADES OF BLACK post ready for today since I couldn’t do it on Sunday (or yesterday), and I might still finish it before I turn into a pumpkin today. But instead I decided to begin this Tuesday with a collection of other things I spotted over the last 24 hours in the midst of the flood of new metal that’s been rushing out on a daily basis since the first of the year.

MOURNFUL CONGREGATION

More than six years after their last album and almost four years after their last EP, Australia’s Mournful Congregation will release a new album named The Incubus Of Karma through 20 Buck Spin on March 23rd. This morning those details were revealed along with the album art — and the album’s first single, “Scripture of Exaltation and Punishment“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VENOM PRISON, SLUGDGE, AGRONA, HRVST, THY FEEBLE SAVIOUR, TOTENWAGEN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jan 152018
 

 

In 1983 the U.S. Congress passed a bill by a veto-proof majority, subsequently signed into law by President Reagan, establishing Martin Luther King Day as an American federal holiday. It’s being observed here today in the U.S., though one wonders whether such a law would have been passed by the current Congress or signed by the current President, what with all the talk about shitholes and such.

Here in our own metallic shithole we’re conducting our own kind of observance, the kind that doesn’t depend on Acts of Congress or presidential largesse, but only on the continuing brain-blasting creativity of metal musicians, which seems never-ending. The torrent of new music since shortly after New Year’s Day has been kind of staggering. I may have to try to do one of these round-ups every day this week in an effort (one doomed to failure) to keep up.

VENOM PRISON

My colleague Andy called Venom Prison’s debut album Animus “nothing less than a neck-wrecking explosion of audio ultra-violence that fans of Dying Fetus, Cryptopsy, and Cattle Decapitation should already be salivating over”. Roughly 18 months after that all-killer, no-filler advent, Prosthetic Records will reissue the album on February 23rd. To pave the way, the band released a new video late last week (via Revolver mag) for a track off the album called “Immanetize Eschaton“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: GATECREEPER, IRON REAGAN, RITES OF THY DEGRINGOLADE, KNELT ROTE, IRON FLESH, EEVIOMORFIA, HIGH COMMAND, SCORN OF CREATION, MINORS, SCHIERMANN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jan 102018
 

 

There’s a megaton of explosive stuff in this mid-week round-up of recommended new sounds, so I’ll dispense with an introduction and just move right to the music.

GATECREEPER AND IRON REAGAN

Gatecreeper’s debut album Sonoran Depravaton was so damned good, a true highlight of 2016 and the source of a song (“Craving Flesh”) that I put on our list of that year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Their EP from last November, Sweltering Madness, was also damned good, a meshing together of dismal, stomping brutality and maniacal, earth-shaking obliteration. And so when I saw that Gatecreeper had released a new song yesterday I nearly soiled myself in my haste to listen to it. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: NEW SONGS FROM HOODED MENACE, THE CROWN, USURPRESS, PORTAL, MAMMOTH GRINDER, AND MORE

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Jan 082018
 

 

In an effort to catch up with new music that appeared last week (or in some cases that I only discovered last week), I’ve resorted to a two-part OVERFLOWING STREAMS post. And for those who haven’t noticed the format of these posts, they’re a form of personal surrender to the flood of new music. I enjoy writing thoughts about what I want to recommend, but in posts such as this one I just let the music speak for itself because there’s so much to recommend that I don’t have time to blurt out my own reactions.

In Part 1 (here), I collected some newly discovered splits. This one is devoted mainly to new advance tracks, some of which just premiered today, with a few full-album or EP streams in the mix. Continue reading »

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