SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): EWIGKEIT, HORIZON ABLAZE, IGNIS HAERETICUM, KANASHIMI

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Oct 292017
 

 

This is Part 2 of a three-part SHADES OF BLACK feature for this week. As I explained in Part 1, I assembled a dozen items, all but one of them consisting of new music. I arranged them in alphabetical order by band name and then divided the list into three parts. I’m going to try to finish Part 3 in time to post it on Monday morning.

EWIGKEIT

James Fogarty has a long and impressive list of bands and solo projects on his resume, including The Meads of Asphodel, Old Forest, Svartelder, and In the Woods…. But his longest-running project, the one that came first, is Ewigkeit. The first album under that name was Battle Furies, released in November 1997 by the Eldethorn label, and now it’s being released again — but this isn’t a mere reissue. Continue reading »

WITH GREAT POWER…

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 282017
 

 

(Andy Synn wrote this piece, reflecting on the passage of roughly seven years after the publication of his first piece at NCS — this one.)

…yada, yada, yada, you know the rest, right?

Seriously though, I recently passed the seventh anniversary of my coming onboard to write for NCS, and it’s caused me to reflect on my time here, and how lucky I am to have a platform where what I think and what I write can make a difference – if only a small one – to so many bands. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): HOODED MENACE, WAR POSSESSION, RADON TRENCH, BLASPHEMOUS PUTREFACTION, SCARECROW

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  9 Responses »
Oct 272017
 

 

Happy Friday. And if you actually happen to be happy because it’s Friday, instead of boiling with rage because you’ve just endured four-plus days of bullshit, you may not relish the music you’re about to hear. On the other hand, maybe your preferred means of matching your happiness (or your rage) to music involves abrading your ear drums, losing your mind, and mercilessly kicking open the spigot on your adrenaline glands. In which case, brothers and sisters, you’re right where you need to be — right here.

This is Part 2 of a round-up I began yesterday (here). And even though I didn’t finish this in time to post it yesterday, it’s exactly what I intended to post then. In other words, I decided to close my ears to the flood of other new songs that surfaced between then and now. There’s always time to catch up with that on Saturday, though I have a bad tendency to wound myself with intoxicants on Friday nights, so I ain’t promising nothing.

HOODED MENACE

The fifth Hooded Menace album will arrive on January 26 via Season of Mist, with the title Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed and cover art by Adam Burke, who continues to kill everything this year. The first advance track, “Carnal Reflections“, debuted at DECIBEL two days ago. Or was it three? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): PORTAL, VALDUR, WALTER FORNICATION, DÖDSRIT, TERRA MATER

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  8 Responses »
Oct 262017
 

 

I started writing this round-up of new music two days ago, but was unable to finish it. It is now somewhat dated. But I’ve resisted the impulse to make it dramatically longer by adding everything I’ve discovered in the intervening days — I only added two new things. But since the collection has now ballooned up to music from 10 bands, I divided it into two parts

I really don’t believe that there is a higher or lower power organizing the events of my life, but I can understand why other people do believe that. Sometimes the shit rains down so hard and chokes the throat so completely that I think to myself, “This can’t possibly be a matter of chance!” And sometimes everything flows so shiny and chrome that I think I have done something right and some force recognizes that and bestows a blessed reward. Take last night, for example.

In making my usual rounds, in which I surf the effluent of the internet and our own in-box looking for musical revelations, I came across the following gems gleaming among the sewage. And it’s all pretty damned filthy, yet still gleaming, in the way that the best filth shines with a preternatural vibrancy.

And while I don’t believe in higher or lower powers, I do appreciate synchronicity, and so it proved to be that almost everything here was a form of death metal (though my later additions diluted the death a bit), and the excursion began and ended with scarecrows, which seemed so fitting less than one week before Halloween. Continue reading »

LIST-BREAKERS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  26 Responses »
Oct 232017
 


Fernando Falcone: “Antiguos cuentos de Brujas, 05. Edhasa” (2015)

 

I’ve mentioned more than once that we have very few plans here. Or at least I have very few plans. I live from day to day, wondering what fusillades from our writers will appear in my in-box, and remaining just as clueless about what will light the spark under the kindling stacked in my own mind. But this post was kindled in an especially unusual way.

In January 2013 I posted an extensive list of albums we were eagerly anticipating would be released over the early months of that year. Yesterday, almost 4 years later, Gaia left a comment that asked this question: “Is there anything I should be looking out for in the tail end of this year? I’m wondering if there’s any list-breakers due.”

Yes, it’s my burden as this site’s editor, to be notified of every comment, on every post, no matter when the posts were made, no matter how close we are to a thermocnuclear holocaust or unfortunate delays in the picking up of our garbage bins.

At first I thought, man, Gaia is really far behind, like a snail bringing up the rear of the Bataan death march; all the other people are dead, and he’s just now coming home. And then I thought, man, it’s our own damned fault for not giving people any logical place where they could engage in a conversation about what’s left to be released THIS YEAR. Or maybe Gaia just discovered LSD. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): SUMMONING, WENDING TIDE, ZEIT, OVER THE VOIDS, CALLIGRAM, BLOT & BOD

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Oct 222017
 

 

Welcome to Part 2 of this Sunday’s SHADES OF BLACK column, which I divided into two parts because of its considerable length (Part 1 can be found here). In this second installment you’ll find a mix of advance tracks from forthcoming albums as well as full releases.

SUMMONING

I’ve already written two posts since August about Summoning’s new album and I didn’t even have any music to share, which I suppose is a sign of how hyped I’ve been about the prospect of something new from these Viennese wizards. I guess the third time is the charm, because now there finally is a song I can share. But first, allow me to excerpt a quote from the press announcement by Napalm Records — who will be releasing the album on January 5, 2018: Continue reading »

MORE EVIL IN YOUR LIFE: NOCTURNE, ANATOMIA, BLATTARIA, THE NIGHTSTALKER AND SERCATI, DEGOTTEN, EUFOBIA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 202017
 

 

As you can see, I decided to give the “SEEN AND HEARD” title a rest for today. After I picked these new songs and videos for an end-of-week round-up, it became clear they all had something in common. Even though the music is all very different, it all sounds… evil.

NOCTURNE

This Austrian melodic black metal band’s self-titled debut album (briefly reviewed here) proved their ability to create powerful, dramatic music that displayed considerable diversity. Now they’re returning with a new album named The Burning Silence (the cover art is above), which will be released by Talheim Records on December 16th. From that album, they’ve recently released “Hubris Virtue” as a digital single and a lyric video. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CODE, AOSOTH, DEGIAL, PILLARS, BOUND TO PREVAIL, GRITTER, CHALK HANDS, UNTIL THE SKY DIES

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 182017
 


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It occurred to me that the tag I came up with for these round-ups of new tracks — “Random Fucking Music” — could be misconstrued. The idea wasn’t that this would be random music you could actually fuck to, although I guess you could fuck to some of it if you were like certain members of the non-human animal kingdom who pound away in a frenzy for a few minutes (or less) and then go off to find more food or take a shit, leaving the female of the species looking either confused or bored and wondering, “Is it in yet?”

Yeah, don’t remind me, I know human males do that too. I guess maybe an album-length funeral doom track could provide some reciprocal coital benefits, but I assume most people like to shift into a higher gear at some point, except for those who pass out somewhere along the way. I’ve never seen a sloth have sex. Might be worth investigating. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: TENGGER CAVALRY, AETHERIAN, OUTER HEAVEN, DYPHTÊ, FRAMEWORK, DREAMSHIFT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Oct 162017
 

 

You may have noticed that my posts have been scarce over the last few days — nothing at all over the weekend (Andy’s Best of British kept us from going dark altogether) and only one post on Friday and one on Thursday. The reason is that last Thursday my employer hosted its annual retreat, which was in Montana this year.

As usual, it has a very good time. But between the travel, the work-related meetings, the staying up late while getting hammered with co-workers, and the watching of some playoff baseball, NCS temporarily fell far down the ladder of my life. I wasn’t even been able to keep up with our e-mail traffic or my usual daily searching through statuses of friends, bands, and labels on Facebook.

Needless to say, I’m way behind. So what I’m doing here is collecting some music I actually had planned to post last Thursday, but ran out of time before leaving Seattle — though I have added two more songs I became aware of since then. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HENRY KANE, APOTELESMA, PASSAGES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 102017
 

 

One of the daily risks of running a blog like this one, which is a part-time yet obsessive hobby rather than a full-time business, is that almost all plans are subject to derailment. The old fucking day job and other personal obligations spring surprises, and they usually take precedence. And so, although I had planned a much bigger round-up than this one, I’ve been diverted, and am now impulsively picking just these three new songs from that much bigger group.

I’m not even going to call this “Part 1”, which would imply I might have a Part 2 tomorrow. But who knows? We’ll just see how tonight and tomorrow go…

HENRY KANE

I hope you already recognize the name Henry Kane, but in case you don’t, it’s the name that the veteran Swedish vocalist and musician Jonny Pettersson borrowed from a character in the Poltergeist film series for his solo metal project — a project that lengthens a resume which already includes participation in Wombbath, Ursinne, Just Before Dawn, Vholdghast, Syn:drom, Ashcloud, and Skineater.

Through Henry Kane, he has put a unique spin on his beloved Swedish death metal in a debut album entitled Den Förstörda Människans Rike that was released earlier this year by Transcending Obscurity Records. And now we have a new Henry Kane track to enjoy from a forthcoming split. Continue reading »

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