AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DUNGEON SERPENT — “WORLD OF SORROWS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Jul 132021
 

 

Who doesn’t love a breathtaking surprise? The sight of meteor showers blazing at night, a sudden murmuration of starlings overhead, the penetration of sun rays through heavy clouds… such things create a sense of wonder. Other surprises are more frightening and destructive — earthquakes, flash floods, gunfire going off in crowded gatherings, bombs raining on villages.

Such thoughts have come to mind in listening to World of Sorrows, the debut album of the death metal band Dungeon Serpent from Vancouver, British Columbia. It comes out of left field, preceded only by a two-track 2020 demo (though the demo itself was a very promising surprise). And like those other contrasting surprises mentioned above, it both inspires a sense of wonder and also inflicts breathtaking levels of sonic obliteration. The music is morbid, mauling, and merciless, but also home to both emotionally evocative melodies and the kind of pyrotechnic guitar mastery that drops jaws.

And there’s an especially big surprise at the end.

Little wonder that we leaped at the chance to present a full stream of the album today in advance of its July 16 release by Nameless Grave Records. Continue reading »

DEATH METAL REVIEW ROUND-UP: IN ASYMMETRY, MVLTIFISSION, CATHEXIS

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 122021
 

 

(In this article DGR combines shorter than usual reviews of three records released during the first half of the year — by In Assymetry (international), Mvltifission (China), and Cathexis (U.S.).)

It’s not too often that I’ll try my hand at the “Short but Sweet” style of reviewing, but my travels around the world of heavy metal have proven quite fruitful, so much so that it would be criminal to have some of these releases locked away while I wait for the brain to fully congeal some sort of deep-dive review on them.

Also, in some cases albums can be exactly what is presented on the cover. You know what you’re in for staring at the cover art, and from there it’s just a choice of how far you want to be punched into the side of a cliff. In this case, there’s a near ceaseless brutality flavoring the international travels, starting with a massive union of multiple countries before landing in China for an unexpected visit, and then finally arriving somewhat closer to home with one hell of a tongue twister in the opening line.

Will this be a new norm? Probably not, but there’s an excellent chance here to dispense with the intellectual bullshit – briefly – and just enjoy the death of every instrument present here, because every band within this review collection absolutely destroy on that front. Continue reading »

AT THE GATES: “THE NIGHTMARE OF BEING”

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Jul 122021
 

 

(We present TheMadIsraeli‘s review of the seventh studio album by At the Gates, released earlier this month by Century Media.)

Watching how your favorite musical artists deal with the inevitability of getting older, slower, and weaker is one of the more fascinating aspects of this media consumption thing we all do. That’s especially true of metal, which is a genre that’s often predicated on physical ability. It’s all technicality and endurance, coupled with demands on the performers to be emotionally resonant, to still maintain that human element that makes music touch our souls and make life just that little bit better.

It’s commonplace for a lot of long-running bands to slow down, dial back the technical aspects of their music a bit and try to compensate for their age in other ways. Sometime they try to make their songwriting better, and to try less mechanically demanding ideas. Sure, here and there they can still write a barnburner that’s on a crash course with a brick wall at two hundred miles per hour, but it’s tough to play a whole album of that anymore. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MÜTTERLEIN, 0-NUN, ELLES VĀRTI, CRUCIFIXION BELL, WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, WORMWITCH, NYTT LAND

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Jul 112021
 

 

Hate to say it, but this week’s column is in some respects going to be linguistically abbreviated, if not musically. The day job has been a bear this weekend, and on top of that I’m getting together via Zoom in a couple hours with Andy Synn and DGR to record “voice breaks” for our next session as Gimme Metal DJs on July 30 (at noon PDT, 3:00pm EDT, 9:00pm CET). I’m not confident in my ability to ad lib about the music we’ve picked, so I need to make some notes to myself, e.g., “don’t fuck this up!” We’ve picked a lot of good stuff for our two-hour show, so I hope you’ll tune in.

Anyway, my writing eventually peters out today (you’ll see what I’ve done to short-cut things as you move through this collection), but that’s not a sign of lack of enthusiasm or appreciation for the music itself. I do believe it’s all still worth your time.

MÜTTERLEIN (France)

About three weeks ago in one of these columns I highlighted the release of a giant 24-track sampler by Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions. At that time I picked out tracks from three French black metal bands to feature, because they were all from forthcoming albums. I also mentioned that the sampler included tracks from a new split by Limbes (formerly known as Blurr Thrower) and Mütterlein — though I hadn’t yet listened to them. Now I have, and I want to draw special attention to Mütterlein’s track here, in part because it creates such great anticipation for a new Mütterlein album headed our way via Debemur Morti Productions. Continue reading »

PESTILENCE: “EXITIVM”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jul 092021
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new ninth album by Pestilence, which is out now on Agonia Records.)

Patrick Mameli is a musician in the extreme metal music space I’m often conflicted about.

One one hand, I think he is an absolute genius. What he’s created with Pestilence and continues to do under the Pestilence banner never has been replicated convincingly, and probably cannot be replicated.  He has an unparalled command and mastery, both as a guitarist and as a songwriter of dissonance and chaos.  Pestilence is one of the few bands out there (and the only band that does it the way they do it) who completely shun away from conventional melody while using a jazz bent to create a twisted brand of death metal that I can only say sounds like what it feels like to experience real and severe mental illness and terror.  There is a pathos to Pestilence that is undeniable. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 092021
 

(Andy Synn offers us a chance to catch up with a quartet of albums you may have overlooked)

Is it just me, or was June an insanely busy period for music?

Honestly, despite doing my best to cover as many new releases as possible, and despite the best efforts of my NCS cohorts to do the same, it feels like we missed out on a lot of records this month.

This, of course, made it pretty difficult to pick just 4 artists/albums for this article, and at one point there was a version of this column that was all Death Metal (including Diabolizer, Noctambulant, and Cathexis, if memory serves) until I realised that maybe, just maybe, that didn’t give the broadest picture of the last 30 days (but you should still check out all three of those bands/albums if you haven’t already).

Don’t worry, there’s still some serious brutality on offer, but I’ve managed to widen the scope a little since then so that today’s article – which features four, count ‘em, four debut albums – should have the potential to appeal to a slightly broader cross-section of our readers than just those who like to have their eardrums perforated by the musical equivalent of a turbo-charged jackhammer.

And, speaking of…

Continue reading »

DEAD AND DRIPPING: “MIASMIC EULOGIES PREDICATING AN ETERNAL NOCTURNE”

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Jul 072021
 

 

(Vonlughlio returns to NCS with a review and recommendation of the second album by the New Jersey brutal death metal band Dead and Dripping, which was released in mid-May of this year.)

It’s been a long time without yours truly doing a small review, mainly due to work commitments and family time in this pandemic-infested world. If you are reading this, I hope you and your loved ones are well.

This time around I have the opportunity to write about the solo BDM project Dead and Dripping from the multi-instrumentalist Evan Daniele. I became aware of this project back in 2017 when they re-released their demo Disillusioned by Excessive Human Consumption, which I believe is back in the Dominican Republic with other CDs I could not take with me when I moved to US.

Last year saw the release of the debut album Profane Verses of Murderous Rhetoric, which we reviewed here at NCS, and that release made it to my list of top 2020 BDM albums. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): OWL CAVE — “BROKEN SPEECH”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 072021
 

 

Prepare yourselves for an extraordinary 43-minute trip, because that’s what you’ll find in Broken Speech, the extravagant debut album by the French band Owl Cave that we’re premiering today in advance of its release later this month by the new French label Time Tombs Productions.

For those who need genre references, this creation is very difficult to pigeonhole in such ways. Over the course of its twisting and turning path, you can pick out ingredients of dissonant and avant-garde black metal, industrial, electronica, and prog, among others.

It incorporates widely varying but relentlessly visceral rhythms and an equally wide and richly textured array of hallucinatory emanations that are both entrancing and unnerving; in those ways it’s both earthbound and completely unearthly. It’s often monumentally heavy, and continuously capable of seizing control of your reptile brain, but equally capable of uncomfortably twisting your mind inside-out or placing it under the power of spells, some of them seductive and some of them harrowing. Continue reading »

HANNES GROSSMANN: “TO WHERE THE LIGHT RETREATS”

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Jul 072021
 

 

(We present another one of DGR’s typically deep-dive reviews, this time focusing on the latest album by Hannes Grossmann, which is out now.)

Hannes Grossmann has over the years become one of metal’s more prolific names and certainly one of metal’s more recognizable drummers, and for good reason. His unerring precision behind the kit could make anyone jealous. Had Gene Hoglan not already earned the nickname ‘The Atomic Clock’ through his own hard work, Hannes could easily step up as the next candidate to experiment with how gravity affects time via blastbeats after being launched into space.

When you have a resume that has included banner names of the tech-death scene and on some of their landmark works, it’s easy to understand how Hannes has gained the following he has. It also makes sense, then, that he could easily make his way in the world of solo projects, and in fact has been doing so for four albums now, the most recent of which — To Where The Light Retreats — saw release in early June, following a solo single last year. Continue reading »

SALLOW MOTH – STASIS COCOON

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jul 062021
 

(Andy Synn gazes once more into the void… and finds the new album from Sallow Moth gazing back!)

I know I’ve said this before, but it still bears repeating – one of the (many, many) great things about writing for NCS is that we don’t have to stick to anyone’s schedule but our own.

Oh, sure, if we agree to host a premiere or some such then we’re bound by our word to stick to that date/time, but the fact that we don’t have any print deadlines to meet, no advertisers to placate, and no pressure from above to produce a certain number of articles or reviews every day/week/month means that we can be a lot more flexible with what we write about, and when we write about it.

Case in point, when lepidopterous Death Metal dreamer Sallow Moth surprise-released their new album, Stasis Cocoon, at the end of last week, I was able to quickly pivot and switch up my writing/reviewing schedule in response, ensuring that – hopefully – this succulent little slab of metallic sci-fi mayhem receives at least some of the attention it deserves.

Continue reading »

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