SHADES OF BLACK: XALPEN, KALMANKANTAJA, EXDESTRIER, PESTIS, DEKADENS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Feb 262023
 


Xalpen

I read an article about sleep this morning, It reinforced the idea that I’m doing the right thing sleeping 8-10 hours a night on the weekends, a fairly recent development for me. It also helped explain why I have such vivid dreams in the last phase of sleeping right before waking up, even if they’re like ghosts that tend to vanish within minutes of waking. The article may be pay-walled, but you might find it interesting too (it’s here), or maybe you already know the details.

On the downside, sleeping late makes for a slow start on my weekend NCS posts, especially when I don’t get a head start on the selections the night before. Fortunately there’s someone out there who may have a different sleep cycle, in addition to being in a different time zone, and what he finished very late last night in his time zone was waiting for me in my in-box this morning.

Is it stealing for me to just copy/paste a few things from his collection right into this post to make up for my late start? If so, I confess to theft. At least I won’t pass it off as my own. But I do have a few of my own choices to lead the way in blackening the sabbath. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THECODONTION, CEREMENTED, ZEPHID, NETHERMANCY, VOIDCEREMONY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Feb 252023
 


Thecodontion

I used to type lists of new songs and videos I wanted to check out, pasting the links below the band names. Now I use a Firefox thingy called Pocket. When I’m on a web page for a song or video, I tap the Pocket icon on the Firefox browser and it automatically saves the link in Pocket.

Much faster than what I used to do, but the downside is that when I go to Pocket I see endless rows of thumbnail images for all the links I’ve saved. I fear my fingers will cramp from the scrolling, down and down and down… and my mind starts to cramp up on me too.

The result is that I tend to focus on stuff at the top (the links I saved most recently), especially when I’m hurrying. That phenomenon explains most of the choices in today’s round-up. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: KRULLUR — “DEAD LIVE!”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 242023
 

The world is obviously a very big place. Most of us will only glimpse relatively tiny corners of it in a lifetime’s worth of travels. Similarly, there are vast numbers of far-flung metal bands most of us will never get to see on stage, no matter how addicted we are to their music, and studio records just don’t often come close to capturing the explosiveness of some bands’ live performances.

Houston, Texas-based Krullur is undoubtedly one of those bands a lot of people overseas, or even in the U.S., will never get to see as they destroy venues with their crazed and crushing amalgams of thrash, death metal, punk, and grindcore. But what we’ve got for you today is the next best thing, the premiere stream of a record called Dead Live! that does an astonishingly effective job of bringing listeners right into the head-exploding blast zone. Continue reading »

DEATH ETERNAL

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Feb 232023
 

(Today Axel Stormbreaker focuses attention on an octet of releases by the Virginia-based label Death Eternal.)

Death is final. Death is eternal. Even if there exists some sort of afterlife in what lies beyond, it’s probable we won’t be carrying any of our present memories along. Blame me if today’s mood seems a bit philosophical, but current events can make a guy ponder. You’re wondering what’s the point of it all, or why it’s an aspect all of Earth’s religions won’t dispute. Or even how would our essence grow in the first place, if memories are not supposed to matter.

That being said, Death Eternal Records from Richmond, Virginia is a name rather suitable for an underground DIY endeavor. Especially one that deals with ominous music, even when their criteria do grand salvation on a personal degree. What you may find here, none can quite guarantee. What you shall miss, no one could really answer. All you’ll be getting is nothing besides the dusty offerings of a small-scale label, dedicated to promoting local talent among other relative bands. Continue reading »

GOROD: “THE ORB”

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Feb 222023
 

(Professor D. Grover the XIIIth returns to NCS with the following review of Gorod’s new album, which is set for release on March 7th.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. If you’re reading this, I can only hope that you are familiar with French tech-death masters Gorod, whose career now spans two and a half decades (counting their early years as Gorgasm). The Orb is only their seventh full-length release, with a pair of EPs (and a couple early demos) sprinkled in, but at this point in their career their work has reached legend status in certain corners of the metal world. In my humble esteem, Gorod have for me represented the gold standard of modern tech-death ever since Process Of A New Decline, the album that truly got me interested in tech-death in the first place, and while that release remains my favorite to this day their output has been consistently high.

Gorod‘s style has evolved incrementally with each release, with the biggest shifts generally following a change in the band’s lineup. While the band have been spearheaded from the beginning by guitarist Mathieu Pascal and bassist Benoit Claus, the additions of guitarist Nicolas Alberny and, later, drummer Karol Diers have contributed to the band’s growth. The most notable change came with the additional of current vocalist Julien “Nutz” Deyres after the release of Process, and he made his presence and expanded vocal range felt immediately on the Transcendence EP, especially on that release’s 15 minute title track. ‘Transcendence’ brought with it an expanded focus on progression that paired exceptionally well with the band’s technical prowess and knack for writing catchy hooks and grooves, and the band has further explored that progression on subsequent releases. Continue reading »

HYPNO5E – SHEOL

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 212023
 

(Andy Synn takes us on another epic journey soundtracked by French Prog-Metal maestros Hypno5e)

There’s every chance that, while you’re reading this article, I’ll be out at the massive Gojira arena show here in Nottingham.

The only reason I mention this is that, for years now, Hypno5e have been (lazily) compared to the Big G, despite the fact that the two bands have little in common apart from their nationality.

In fact, if anything, the two groups have only grown further apart as time has gone by, with Hypno5e opting for the path less-travelled and growing more complex and ambitious with every new album.

Which brings us to Sheol – simultaneously both a sequel and a prequel to A Distant Dark Shore (the two albums forming a closed conceptual cycle) – which finds the band continuing to stretch themselves, and their sound, in ever more compelling, challenging, and unpredictable ways.

Continue reading »

BRÆ: “AV VÅLNADER BORTOM ALLT”

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Feb 202023
 

 

(On February 22nd Amor Fati Productions will release the second album by the multinational duo Bræ, and today we present the following review by Hope Gould.)

It would be easy to open and close this review with just naming the two prolific minds behind Bræ. For devotees to the obsidian underground, just the idea of Sweden’s one-man black metal factory Swartadauþuz, and Belgian ambient master Déhà, collaborating on a project is thrilling. And for those not yet acquainted, we could talk at length about their individual contributions and send you down a rabbit hole you won’t surface from for months. You should definitely still do that, but you should also know that Bræ’s new album stands on its own without the name-dropping. So, for now, let’s focus on what matters most – the music.

2021’s A Thousand Ways to End It All and the forthcoming Av Vålnader Bortom Allt follow the same formula: two tracks that each clock in around twenty epic minutes. Raw black metal is deconstructed into dark psychoactive ambience only Déhà could craft. Both releases are graced with spellbinding dungeon synth dripping in signature Swartadauþuz mysticism, which felt to me like the strongest parts of A Thousand Ways to End It All. The duo still brandishes an improvisational quality that won’t appeal to everyone, but they have a clearer grasp on direction in Av Vålnader Bortom Allt that keeps the soundscapes more immersive than the debut. There are also not one, not two, but eight very satisfying OUGH’s and if that doesn’t grab you, I’m afraid nothing will. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MYLINGEN, PALACE OF WORMS, MORK, STRJA, ETHIR ANDUIN, TIDELESS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 192023
 

I didn’t oversleep today, so there’s a lot here. And I don’t just mean the volume of music, but the stylistic range of it too. Black metal has become a vast canvass, but I’ve often gone off the edge of the canvass too. And I’ll add that there are more variants of doom in this mix than usual.

MYLINGEN (Sweden)

To begin today, I’ve chosen At Night I See Demons, the head-spinning debut EP released last month by the Swedish black metal band Mylingen, a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist V.J. (from Apathy Noir) and vocalist G.C. According to Metal Archives, their name is based on the word “myling“, which in Scandinavian folklore was “the phantasmal incarnations of the souls of unwanted children killed by their mothers and forced to roam the Earth until they could persuade someone to bury them properly.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: CATTLE DECAPITATION, THEOPHONOS, THE OCEAN

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Feb 172023
 

Yet another big week for new metal. I have many things I want to recommend, but not enough time today to throw them all your way. So I’ll make a start now, with a sandwich made of some big names at top and bottom and stunning Theophonos in the middle, and continue on Saturday.

CATTLE DECAPITATION (U.S.)

It’s kind of amazing that Cattle Decap have now been around long enough to release a tenth studio album, which is what will happen on May 12th when Metal Blade ushers Terrasite into a waiting world.

We have a linguistic preview of what’s coming, thanks to this statement by guitarist Josh Elmore: Continue reading »

HEXER – ABYSSAL

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Feb 162023
 

(Andy Synn turns his attention once more to long-time NCS favourites Hexer)

To say that Hexer have been on a journey over the course of their career might be considered a cliché, but it would be true all the same.

Beginning with the otherworldly aura of their debut album, the aptly-named Cosmic Doom Ritual, the band then turned their eyes towards the psychic mindscape with the hallucinatory Realm of the Feathered Serpent, and now – on album number three – they’ve shifted the focus of their gaze towards the depths of the abyss.

So let’s see what might be gazing back, shall we?

Continue reading »

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