SHADES OF BLACK: RITUAL MOON, GRINNING DEATH’S HEAD, PA VESH EN, GROZA, AAMON, GLIMT, THRON, OPPRESS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
May 302021
 


Ritual Moon

 

Especially after yesterday’s humongous round-up it probably wasn’t smart for me to follow it with another one, but that’s what I’ve done. As you’ve probably figured out by now, careful thinking and reflection never have much to do with my NCS contributions. Impulse and enthusiasm tend to rule the day.

RITUAL MOON (U.S.)

I had intended to fully explore this L.A. band’s January 2021 debut album after listening to an advance track many months ago, but never got back to it until my comrade DGR recently posted about it. He figured it would be up my alley. It definitely is. Continue reading »

SHEVILS: “MIRACLE OF THE SUN”

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May 282021
 

 

I continue to write about this Norwegian hardcore punk band (I’m calling them that here, though as you’ll learn, that’s an overly simplistic genre label) despite the fact that their music just hovers on the edges of what we usually cover here. Why is that?

I suppose part of the attraction is that I was into punk long before I was into metal, and even though (thanks to this blog) extreme metal has almost entirely supplanted punk in my listening, it’s still capable of striking a chord. But that’s not the whole story of why Shevils have grabbed me again, this time with their new album Miracle of the Sun — their best work yet and a marked evolution in their sound.

Though it would probably go too far to call Shevils a “metallic hardcore band”, the punch in their music still has heft behind it, enough to raise welts. And the songs also carry a dark intensity, an emotional fabric woven in multi-faceted ways, and that’s one of the key qualities that also draws me to metal.

Moreover, the songs are so full of hooks they would leave a fisherman envious and greedy. Continue reading »

SILVER TALON – DECADENCE AND DECAY

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
May 272021
 

(Andy Synn has decided to break the cardinal rule of our site – again – by throwing his weight, and his words, behind the new album from Portland Progressive Power Metal paladins Silver Talon)

The ability to compare one band with another – or with many others – is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable tools in a writer’s arsenal.

Oh, sure, it can be abused and misused – so can any tool – but being able to say that “band [a] sound a bit like band [b]”, or “like the bastard child of [x] and [y]” or “a more modern version of [z]” is a great way to put your reader in the right sort of mindset, and give them some useful context and perspective, to help them appreciate the music they’re about to hear and/or read about.

Still, even I’m willing to admit that it can sometimes be used as a crutch, especially in cases – such as this one – where there’s one particularly obvious comparison that would be far, far, too easy to make.

So, to challenge myself, I’ve decided to review the new album from Progressive/Heavy/Power Metal posse Silver Talon without explicitly mentioning that band at all.

Will I be able to do it? Quoth the raven…

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RIEXHUMATION — “THE FINAL REVELATION OF ABADDON”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
May 262021
 

 

After releasing a pair of demos and an EP from 2012 through 2017, the Italian death metal band Riexhumation then turned their energies to the creation of a debut album that’s now set for release by Lavadome Productions on this coming Friday, May 28th — and it turns out to be a big, eye-opening surprise that should be greedily welcomed by death metal connoisseurs.

It’s not as if this quartet are green newcomers — in addition to those three previous Riexhumation releases, a glance at their resumes on Metal-Archives shows their involvement in other noteworthy extreme metal collectives — but this album is still a most impressive accomplishment.

To borrow some of the (accurate) words from the PR material, it embraces primeval and frightening energies that “dwell somewhere deep within the chasms of the cosmos” to create “ominous, old school death metal darkness” that’s alternately “doom-laden, eerie, raw, and blistering”. It evokes anguished dread, instinctual terrors, and visceral thrills in equal measure, and does so with admirable song-writing dynamism and instrumental execution. Continue reading »

DÖDSRIT – MORTAL COIL

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
May 262021
 

(Sweden’s Dödsrit are back with their first album as a quartet – out this Friday via Wolves of Hades – and Andy Synn has the exclusive scoop right here)

The formula for mixing Black Metal and Crust Punk is so deceptively simple, but so undeniably effective, that it’s really no surprise that the past several years – the past decade, really – have seen such a major increase in bands looking to embrace this particular style and make it their own.

Of course, the crossover between the two styles isn’t a new phenomenon by any means, and stretches back even further than you might imagine, but the fact that it isn’t new doesn’t make it any less devastating in the right hands… and there’s practically no-one else whose hands I’d rather see it in than Dödsrit.

Continue reading »

STONE HEALER // DORDEDUH // KATAAN

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 252021
 

 

(Our contributor Gonzo returns to us with a trio of reviews, focusing on records released within the last month — by Stone Healer, Dordeduh, and Kataan.)

 

STONE HEALER // CONQUISTADOR

To say “there’s a lot to unpack here” about the latest album from Connecticut duo (!) Stone Healer would only be touching the very tip of an extremely jagged and angular iceberg.

Practically bursting with trailblazing creativity at every turn, Conquistador is a massively satisfying listen. Brothers Matt and Dave Kaminsky manage to compress three or four albums’ worth of ideas into each of the seven songs here, and absolutely none of it sounds rushed or contrived. Just with opening track “One Whisper,” the brothers flex an incredible amount of musical muscle: They go from a light acoustic intro, segueing into a cowbell-laden alternative rock verse, and seamlessly shift into a punishing blast-beat. And that’s not even half the song length. Continue reading »

GRAND CADAVER: “MADNESS COMES”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 252021
 

 

(Here’s DGR’s review of the debut death metal EP by a group of Swedish veterans who’ve taken the name Grand Cadaver.)

It’s very likely that a large part of what might catch people’s eyes with a project like Grand Cadaver comes from the band’s lineup – so much so that I assumed our search bar had to be broken within our smoking crater of the internet since I could’ve sworn they’d gotten a shoutout here before.

The project itself is one of many recent creations of the swede-death revivalist forge. While the genre has never gone away, the last few years have seen a humongous resurgence of groups playing that blueprint-perfected, chainsaw-toned, snare-drum-thumping style of death metal. The revivalists often seem to have been made up of names from larger projects – many from the melodeath scene even, as if to stake some sort of claim along the lines of ‘We can play this type of shit too!’.

In the case of the newly founded Grand Cadaver project you have Dark Tranquillity‘s Mikael Stanne at the vocal front, and alongside him stands journeyman drummer Daniel Liljekvist (whom you might recognize as having sat behind the kit for In Mourning and Katatonia in times past), with Stefan Lagergren (whose resume is deep in the death metal scene, including an early stint in Tiamat as well as years in Expulsion), Alex Stjernfeldt (most recently of Let Them Hang, and Novarupta) and Christian Jansson (Pagandom, ex-Transport League) completing the lineup. To say that the group’s resume is stacked is putting it mildly.

So, when you see names like that with the death metal tag attached to it and a near-thirteen-minute EP entitled Madness Comes… you pretty much know what you’re in for from moment one. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CROSS VAULT — “AS STRANGERS WE DEPART”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  1 Response »
May 242021
 

 

On May 28th Iron Bonehead Productions will release As Strangers We Depart, the third album by the German “Viking doom” band Cross Vault, and their first release since the 2016 EP, Miles To Take.

Each song on the new album is an immersive, time-traveling spell that seems to carry the listener back to a mythic age. They meld poignance and passion, heaviness and heartbreak, with an unmistakable feeling of reverence. It’s a devotional album meant to be savored, to be soaked up from start to finish, the kind of experience in which any sense of time passing vanishes. And thus we’re proud to present a full stream of it today. Continue reading »

HUNDRED HEADLESS HORSEMEN – APOKALEPSIA

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 242021
 

(Hold on tight as Andy Synn takes us for a ride with the new album from Hundred Headless Horsemen)

Finnish quartet Hundred Headless Horsemen aren’t the easiest band to pin down.

Mostly this is because the group resolutely refuse to adhere to the normal conventions (or restrictions) of songwriting or genre, going so far as to describe their uniquely unorthodox sound as “Psychedelic Death Metal”, a term which, while certainly intriguing, practically raises more questions than it answers.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely a significant strain of Death Metal in the band’s DNA – though careful analysis will undoubtedly show that it’s more closely related to the Morbus Chron/Sweven offshoot than it is anything from the Floridian swamps or the Stockholm graveyards – but, whether due to natural selection or intelligent design, the sound they produce isn’t so easily classified.

Perhaps an even better comparison – or, at least, the best one I can come up with – would be to think of HHH as the Death Metal equivalent of their more “blackened” countrymen in Oranssi Pazuzu, a band with whom they not only share a love of sludgy grooves and psychotropic sounds, but also an almost pathological aversion to playing by the rules.

Continue reading »

NATURE MORTE: “MESSE BASSE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 242021
 

 

(Our old friend Justin C. has paid us a visit with this guest review of the second album by the French band Nature Morte, recently released via Source Atone Records.)

Nature Morte‘s new album, messe basse, is one that almost slipped by me. The folks over at Invisible Oranges included it on their list of notable releases, with the brief-yet-intriguing description of “Expressive, atmospheric black metal with lacerating melodies carving out their paths in your mind.” Sadly, delays pushed the Bandcamp release back a little bit, and during an already busy Bandcamp Friday (possibly the last), the album almost slipped my mind. I mean, do I really need to check out every so-called “atmospheric black metal” album?

I’m glad I followed up on this one, though. Nature Morte‘s self-chosen genre tags of blackgaze and post-metal puts this album squarely in one of my favorite areas of metal, and better yet, they’ve managed to carve out a bit of sonic space in that area that’s uniquely their own. Continue reading »

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