SEEN AND HEARD: JUST BEFORE DAWN, KATTLIK, MUERT, SENTIENT HORROR

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 282021
 

The high temperature in Seattle on Monday was 23 degrees, making it the coldest day in 31 years according to the National Weather Service. I live close to Seattle, and I feel like I’m in the Arctic, even though I’ve never been to the Arctic. Snow and ice have covered everything in my community and the roads are dangerous, in part because no one here fucking knows how to drive in treacherous conditions.

The upside is that there are attractive snow-covered views out the window in the forest where I live, and I’ve had enough shut-in time on my hands to compile the selections of music you’re about to encounter. If you live someplace where the temps are in the ’70s or ’80s F., or in a frigid place where local governments and residents actually know how to deal with it, please just keep that to yourself.

JUST BEFORE DAWN (Sweden)

About 10 days ago this Swedish death metal war machine discharged a new EP named In the Realm of Ash and Sorrow, as a a tribute to their fallen brothers Sven Groß and L.G. Petrov. For this EP the ever-busy JBD riffmeister Anders Biazzi wrote four new original songs and recorded them with vocalist Remco Kreft (Graceless, Soulburn) and drummer Jon Rudin (Wombbath, Pale King), with guitar solos provided by Kreft and Björn Brusse (Graceless).

In addition, the band recorded a cover of the Entombed song “Drowned” in remembrance of L.G. Petrov, and that one features Gustav Myrin on guitars and bass, with Myrin and Daniel Gustavsson doing the solos. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KAPALA — “DOOMSDAY REQUIEM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Dec 272021
 

 

Few bands on the planet embrace and channel the violent destructiveness of War Metal with as much fanatic fervor as the Kolkata-based band Kapala. Their slaughtering amalgam of death metal and harsh noise seems to be fueled by hate and driven by a disdain for weakness of any kind.

And yet their talents are multi-faceted. There is much more going on within their creations than unapologetic sonic annihilation, and that makes their music fascinating and mind-altering as well as ruinous. It really doesn’t sound like anything else; indeed, linking it with War Metal, as that sub-genre is commonly understood, might be more misleading than descriptive.

Kapala‘s new 22-minute EP Doomsday Requiem is powerful proof of these points. It is indeed ruthlessly destructive and harrowing in its intensity, but its musical craftsmanship is also impressive, revealing nuances and embellishments that link it unmistakably to the ancient legends of the Indian subcontinent. The music creates an atmosphere of mysticism and spiritual possession, capable of inducing perilous trances.

Those qualities — and a panoply of killer riffs and electrifying rhythmic assaults — distinguish the EP from the kind of War Metal that might be cathartic on a first listen but doesn’t lure many people to listen more than once. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can test out the truth of these statements for yourselves, because today we premiere a full stream of Doomsday Requiem in advance of its release by Dunkelheit Produktionen on the last day of this wretched year. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DØDSKVAD — “KRØNIKE II”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 202021
 

 

With Krønike II, now set for a January 20 release by Caligari Records, the Norwegian death metal band Dødskvad continue on the journey through the old legends of their homeland which they began on Krønike I in 2020. Founder E.R. (Desolation Realm, Stygian Ruin) is still at the helm, joined by members of Obliteration and Sovereign (among other bands). Taking their inspiration from Norse myths, they’ve compiled four tracks, and they introduce the soundscapes with these words:

“In the midst of bloody battlefields; through thundering heavens; on the outer branches of the world tree; within the deep caverns beneath the roots. Across a blackened land, fate strikes dissonant chords.”

Dissonance does play a role in these songs, along with other ingredients that make them disconcerting. But every song is multi-faceted in ways that constantly will keep listeners on their toes — and rock them back on their heels, with heads spinning. True to the inspirations, the music also sounds otherworldly, manifesting strange and often terrifying visions, a changing pattern of cold dread and crazed exhilaration. Continue reading »

FUNERAL MIST: “DEIFORM”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Dec 172021
 

Funeral Mist‘s last album, Hekatomb, dropped in June 2018 without any preview. I rushed to listen to it, and rushed a review into print, more to urge it upon listeners than to give it a carefully considered assessment, especially an assessment that would compare it to the band’s preceding albums.

Well, today NoEvDia released a new Funeral Mist album named Deiform, and I’m basically doing the same thing.

This time I actually received an advance copy, but it wasn’t very much in advance of today’s release and it came at a time when I couldn’t drop everything else (much as I wanted to) and really become immersed in what Arioch had created this time around.

So once again, although I’m providing my immediate impressions of the album, I’m mainly urging people to listen to it, especially year-end list-makers who haven’t finished their lists, because Deiform has the capacity to up-end the process. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BENEATH THE SOD — “BENEATH THE SOD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 152021
 

 

“Beneath the Sod scrape back the top soil to lay bare all that is repulsive and feculent beneath. Narcotic and eldritch, Beneath the Sod erodes the listener with a writhing tapestry of industrial doom, grinding noise and hallucinatory horror. Punishing and bewildering, with each release Beneath the Sod sinks deeper into their unique and singularly maddening mire”.

Those are the accurately evocative words with which Cursed Monk Records introduces a new self-titled EP by this utterly diabolical Irish band, an EP set for release on December 17th that we’re presenting today in the full bloom of its terrors. We have more detailed commentary of our own, of course, but at least one more way of attempting to sum up the experience might be this:

It is deeply unsettling, even to the point of inducing queasiness in the listener, and brings forward the stuff of nightmares as old as humanity, and yet manages to become bewitching, to transfix attention, maybe in part because it is so fiendishly effective in crushing the soul and unhinging the mind. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KADAVEREICH — “RADIANCE OF DOOM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 142021
 

 

On December 18th Godz Ov War Productions will release Radiance of Doom, the debut EP of the Russian blackened death metal band Kadavereich. Apart from a reference that the line-up includes members of Grond, Act Of God, and Gwarloth, Godz Ov War gave us no hints about the nature of the music the band had created when it asked that we host the EP’s full streaming premiere today. And thus the feeling of shock and awe that we experienced when listening to it was all the more stupefying.

In a nutshell, the sonic power of the EP is immense, and its impact is utterly devastating (but equally electrifying). It chokes the senses, blots out the ability to think of anything else, and becomes an all-consuming, bone-smashing, mind-mauling experience in remorseless destruction, abject terror, and paralyzing agony. If you’re looking for a transfixing visceral experience and don’t mind being subjected to ruthless audio ruination, you’ve come to the right place. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOATBLOOD — “BLOODDAWN / ANNIHILATION OF THIS WORLD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 132021
 

 

I’ve spilled many words about Goatblood over the years in a seemingly endless quest to describe just how maliciously ruinous yet gripping their music is. I have another opportunity today, because we’re premiering a new two-part album named Blooddawn​/​Annihilation Of This World.

Hatred, disgust, and violence have always seemed to be the dominating inspirations for this malefic duo’s bestial black/death metal ministrations, the more willfully offensive the better. The music’s not ostentatious or pretentious — quite the opposite, which is part of its primeval appeal. All those ingredients are again present and accounted for in this new album, but the two halves of it nonetheless present slightly different takes on the band’s core malignancy of sound. Continue reading »

HYPOCRISY: “WORSHIP”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Dec 092021
 

 

(Here is Wil Cifer‘s review of the new Hypocrisy album, which was released on November 26th by Nuclear Blast.)

This album deserves some love.

As a kid in the ’80s the Devil seemed dangerous to me.When bands like Deicide and Morbid Angel came out the darkness felt more tangible. While what they say about metal being the gateway to Satanism is apparently true, since 36 years later I am even more devoted to the Left Hand Path, and not the Entombed album, I can see where the concept of Ole Scratch has lost the danger it once held. Thus a band like Hypocrisy seems even more vital than they did in the ’90s by releasing an album about conspiracies.

Pentagrams are a fashion statement, government plots involving other-dimensional beings scares a larger audience as if an institution is going to conspire about aliens. What else might they not be truthful about? Thus the lyrical content of Worship gives a heavier feel to the music as a whole. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RÖKKR — “RÖKKR”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 072021
 

 

Into the winter of the soul.
Into the ice.
Foreverblack meadow, embrace new dawn, on raven’s wing,
Hear winter’s song.

Many of us assume that December is an ill-fated time of year for the release of new metal records, what with lots of fans (and writers) being preoccupied with year-end lists and year-end life diversions. But on the other hand, the onset of darkness and cold that December heralds makes it an ideal time of year for the advent of certain kinds of music, the kind that delves into the darkness that comes as the wheel of birth and death rotates into winter — and it seems that RÖKKR‘s self-titled debut album is one of those.

The words quoted above are from the lyrics of one of the album’s five tracks. Further connections to the season are found in such song titles as “Blackest Dawn”, “Into the Ice”, and of course the closing track “Winter”. But how does the music itself form the connection? Today you’ll find out — though it probably isn’t what you would expect. Continue reading »

VOICES: “BREAKING THE TRAUMA BOND”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 072021
 

 

(This is DGR‘s review of the new album by Voices, which was released in late November by Church Road Records.)

I don’t think I was prepared for what transpired within the bounds of the hour-plus of the latest Voices album, Breaking The Trauma Bond. Now there will definitely be a few of you who smirk and go, ‘well, Voices being weird is modus operandi for them,’ and there is definite truth to that statement. Voices are a band  I show to people not because I fully enjoy everything they do but because when the band wrap their minds around a concept – especially since 2014’s London – they somehow manage to make some of the most fascinating and equally abrasive music out there.

The band have a core of death metal and black metal running through them but every release since 2013’s From The Human Forest We Create A Fugue Of Imaginary Rain has been so starkly different from the others that they’re a hard band to pin down, especially since they paint themselves as being sophisticated and avant-garde artistes. However, not even the early single release of An Audience Of Mannequins earlier in the year fully covers what happens within Breaking The Trauma Bond, because the two songs on that single may be the only two traditionally ‘heavy’ songs on this release. Even for Voices, Breaking The Trauma Bond is a fuckin’ weird disc. Continue reading »

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