SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 2): THE KENNEDY VEIL, MEMORIAM, NECROPHOBIC, DARKEST HOUR

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Feb 052018
 

(This is the second part of a new-music round-up compiled by DGR. You can find Part 1 at this location.)

 

The Kennedy Veil – Bloodletting North America Full Set Live

We ended the first part of this collection with a live music video from Rotting Christ, and speaking of live shows, let’s check in with a Sacramento death metal crew who also wound up with a recorded live show in 2017. This one is courtesy of The Kennedy Veil, whose label Unique Leader recently uploaded the twenty-some-odd-minute full set from when the band were on opening tour duties for the tech-death-packed Bloodletting North America tour, which saw them playing alongside the likes of Origin, Archspire, Dyscarnate, and Defeated Sanity. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD BY DGR (PART 1): MISERY INDEX, DEMONICAL, LECHEROUS NOCTURNE, ROTTING CHRIST

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 052018
 

 

(DGR compiled a round-up of new music to launch our Monday at NCS, an eight-song collection that we’ve divided into two parts, with Part Two slated to come very quickly after this first installment.)

 

I’m not going to lie to you all, I’ve been pretty distracted around the NCS office as of late. Usually I’ve unleashed a handful of ridiculous-length reviews by this point, but so far the beginning of 2018 has had your buddy here firmly ensconced in the news trenches, freeing up some of the other folks around here to fully dive into the deep and murky waters of all things underground and unlistenable.

It doesn’t help that I’ve also had tabs open alongside the news haul consisting of album streams from Dagon’s victorious return on Back To The Sea, Bloodshot Dawn’s surprisingly tech-death oriented Reanimation, Afgrund’s mean and urgently-now The Dystopian, and even the occasional leap back into 2017 with Ireland’s Weed Priest and their stoner doom throwback; all of which are seeing constant listens and hopefully time to deep-dive in the near future. Shit, there is even a new Apophys disc entitled Devoratis that we covered very briefly but need to dive back into.

Of course, now that all of that has been written down, the news flood will get worse and I’ll get something done just in time to watch the moon finally escape Earth’s gravity and go sailing off into space as we’re devoured by the Sun’s outer layers as it goes red giant.

But enough jokes about things that seem preferable to going outside and facing the world. Let’s get on with the music. Continue reading »

O DEATH: ALTERED CARBON, VERA HALL, RALPH STANLEY, JEN TITUS, A HILL TO DIE UPON, KHEMMIS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Feb 042018
 

 

I almost never watch anything available through on-line streaming services like Netflix. I don’t watch multi-part TV series available through cable networks like HBO either (I’m one of four people in the U.S. who has never seen a Game of Thrones episode; the other three have been in a coma since 2010). It’s not that I’m uninterested. It’s a question of time, and choices among what I’d have to sacrifice in order to make room for all the hours of viewing. But I made an exception last night.

My wife is out of town visiting one of her sisters. Time with my wife, who has no interest in watching the kind of shows referred to above, is one of the things I’d have to sacrifice if I watched more TV. Time with NCS is another one. But with my wife gone and with my NCS post for today (not this one, the next one) at least planned out in my head, I decided to start watching Altered Carbon on Netflix. The first season became available on February 2nd.

The book of the same name, by Richard Morgan, is an old favorite of mine; I’ve read every other sci-fi book he’s written, too, but I always thought it would be great if someone turned Altered Carbon into a movie or TV series. So, with some extra time on my hands, this was a temptation I couldn’t resist. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MORBOSIDAD, BLACK ROYAL, LEECHED, ARGONAVIS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Feb 032018
 

 

I got a late start on this Saturday’s round-up of new music, and then burned a lot of time trying to decide what to include. I didn’t have time to do much rounding up over the last couple of weeks due to the daily roll-out of my 2017 Most Infectious Song list and the usual platter of premieres, and during that interval my notes of things to check out became mountainous.

I know that DGR is pulling together his own round-up for Monday, which will help us catch up a bit, but there’s still quite a lot to do. I’ll at least make a modest start with the four songs I’ve packed into this post.

MORBOSIDAD

I still have vivid memories of the first time I saw Morbosidad play live, which was also the last time. That was at California Deathfest in 2015. They were absolutely barbaric, a blackened death metal war machine unleashing non-stop savagery from start to finish.

They were fronted by original vocalist Tomas Stench, a menacing shaven-headed figure clad in gauntlets with six-inch spikes and crossed bandoliers fully loaded with bullets. When he wasn’t banging his head during instrumental breaks, he was spewing ghastliness with head thrown back like a wolf calling to his kind. He also set an unbound Bible on fire and tossed the smoldering pages into the audience. Since the pages didn’t fully ignite, some helpful audience members finished the job, starting a small bonfire in the mosh pit. Very cool way to start that Saturday night. Continue reading »

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

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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

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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 »

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