AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CRAWLING CHAOS — “XLIX”

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Nov 192020
 

 

XLIX, the new second album by the Italian death metal band Crawling Chaos which is set for release on November 20th 2020 via Time To Kill Records, is a concept album inspired by a book that remains widely read and widely cited five centuries after it was written, and in its concept is a departure from the more usual subject matter to be found within death metal, including this band’s own full-length debut from seven years ago, Repellent Gastronomy. The band have explained:

“While Repellent Gastronomy was some sort of anthology of Lovecraftian horrors revisited in a death metal fashion, XLIX is a concept album in all respects. To write it we were inspired by “The Prince”, the famous book written by Niccolò Machiavelli in the Sixteenth Century. The narration is a kind of parable, a chronicle out of time and space that traces the story of a nameless and faceless protagonist. All the lyrics are penned in the first person by this sort of ‘new Prince'”. Continue reading »

GORATORY: “SOUR GRAPES”

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Nov 192020
 

 

(Here’s Vonlughlio’s review of Goratory’s new album Sour Grapes, which is out now on Everlasting Spew Records.)

This time around I have the opportunity to review Goratory’s new album Sour Grapes, released by Everlasting Spew Records on October 16th.

For those who are not familiar, this Brutal Death Metal band from Boston, Massachusetts was born in 2000 and released their debut demo that year. Their debut album arrived in 2001 and was well-accepted in the scene and stamped their name into our souls since then. Just a year after, they released their second offering, which went into new territory (sort of) when the technical aspects of their music became more prominent, and that went along very well with the brutal delivery they were going for.

For their third offering, they took more time in releasing it. It saw the light of day in 2004 and continued on the same path as its predecessor. This release was amazing, no doubt in my mind, but for me the second release remained my favorite. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SUBTERRAEN — “ROTTEN HUMAN KINGDOM”

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Nov 182020
 

 

To paraphrase a favorite columnist’s words from a piece published today, the autumn’s coronavirus surge was as foreseeable as fall’s fading light, and we are looking at a deadly December nearly everywhere. It becomes easier and easier to think of Nature as sentient, and as having found a new way to revolt against the greedy plundering of humankind and to extract a costly penance for what we have done to it, and to ourselves.

And it is thus a synchronicity of timing that in the midst of this particularly awful fall, in a year already ravaged by disease and ever-increasing weather extremes, Transcending Obscurity Records will be releasing Rotten Human Kingdom by the French band Subterraen, because the album stands as a powerful, unvarnished condemnation of that planetary destruction, and as a harrowing vision of the vengeance that has come and will continue to come in ever-more inventive and terrible ways.

This album, which are are premiering now just days before its release, consists of only four tracks, but each in its own way is monumental, not just in the track-lengths of three of the four, but also in the magnitude of the songs’ emotional impact and the varied ways in which the band have created them. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ALUSTRIUM / DÖ / FUMING MOUTH

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 182020
 


Alustrium

 

(Andy Synn prepared the following reviews of three recent and very impressive EPs.)

It’s pretty common knowledge that, for the most part at least, I’m more of an “album guy” than an “EP guy”. There’s just something about the extra effort, the extra level of commitment, involved in creating an album that makes it feel more real and more substantial in my mind (although I’m sure that’s not always true).

That being said, I can’t deny that there are certain times when an EP is exactly what I’m looking for from a band, something explicitly designed to deliver a short, sharp shock of (ideally) all their best ideas and elements in one concise, captivating package.

Which is exactly what I have here for you today, three EPs – from three tonally and stylistically very different artists – all of which are pretty much brand new (one of them, in fact, is so new that it isn’t actually released until Friday) that find each band putting out some of their best material yet while also dropping a few hints as to where they might take things next. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CONTRARIAN — “ONLY TIME WILL TELL”

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Nov 172020
 

 

There’s a lot to be said about the new Contrarian album Only Time Will Tell that we’re premiering today, from its concept to its composition and its execution. In a nutshell, those subjects involve heavy-metal escapism, wildly adventurous ideas, and extreme virtuosity — and all those aspects of the music are connected.

The album’s escapist qualities are certainly evident in its layout, artwork, and the lyrics through which the narrative unfolds. The artwork is lavish, and invokes the kind of intersection between fantasy, science fiction, and metal that has been a persistent feature of the genre for decades (if you’re uncomfortable being a nerd, then you’re a sub-par metalhead!).

And in the tale itself, Contrarian again use the adventures of their recurring protagonist “the cloaked contrarian” to convey ideas involving philosophy, theology, and science — this time by sending him on a travel through time in an effort to eradicate past sins and to bring about healing, while also raising the question whether time does indeed heal all wounds. Continue reading »

DARK BUDDHA RISING: “MATHREYATA”

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Nov 162020
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Finnish dark underlords of psychedelic drone, Dark Buddha Rising, which was released by Svart Records on November 13th.)

You know, despite existing on pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum, Drone and Grind have a weird amount in common… at least, they do from my perspective.

For one thing, both styles are – in my experience – more enjoyable live than on record (with some notable exceptions, of course), and both make a lot more sense to me when they’re mixed in with more… let’s say “traditional”… forms of Metal.

This means that if you want to get me bumpin’ ‘n’ grindin’ then you’d best inject a heavy dose of Death Metal along with it. And if you want me to embrace the Drone you’ll need to bring the Doom too.

On top of that, they both exist in that weird space where, although I understand what people mean when they use these terms, I can’t necessarily define them.

But, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, “I know it when I hear it.”

Case in point, Dark Buddha Rising’s seventh album straddles the line between genres so adroitly that I still can’t tell you exactly where it lands.

My head says it’s Drone, but my heart says it’s Doom, and my guts… well, my guts just say that it’s one of the best albums of the year, and yet another career highlight from Finland’s favourite sub-sonic sorcerors. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BESTIALIS — “RITUS”

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Nov 132020
 

 

Just yesterday I was confessing that one of the reasons I’m so open to hosting premieres every day is a selfish motivation — because it affords the opportunity to discover new music from new bands that I might otherwise miss (and that you might miss too!). Sometimes those opportunities bring thrilling surprises, and today it has happened again through the discovery of a fascinating German black metal band named Bestialis.

What you are about to hear, on the day of its release by Vendetta Records, is the debut recording of this group, an EP named Ritus. The formidable success of the EP will be less surprising if you understand that Bestialis is the result of of a long-term artistic and spiritual conspiracy between two artists — vocalist Lastaurus and guitarist Absorber — who have been making music for 20 years; both of them are part of northwestern Germany’s Culthe Collectiv/Culthe Fest (Münster).

What they’ve achieved is both conceptually and musically tantalizing. In their lyrical focus, Bestialis focus on a concept “whose basic premise is to understand humans as – primarily and in the most positive way – animal beings, and thus, at its essence, to explore, proclaim and worship the bestia or beast in man.”. Ritus thus offers an introduction to this concept and puts into its narrative tales of prehistoric bull cults and Persian mythology (such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, provided in the band’s own reinterpretation). Continue reading »

FATAL CASTRATION: “DIVERSED PARADIGM OF LUNACY”

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Nov 132020
 

 

(In this post Vonlughlio recommends the second album by the Filipino brutal death metal band Fatal Castration, which was released on November 6th by Sevared Records.)

One of the joys of the internet is that moment when out of the blue you find a new band that just blows you away the moment you push play and the first notes emerge. This is the case of FC from the Philippines, who released their second offering Diversed Paradigm of Lunacy a week or so ago via Sevared Records.

This project was born back in 2009, and as they were deep underground there was not much information about them, not until the release of their debut album Perishan Grinder back in 2014. The release included songs from a 2008 demo that I could not find. But I’m not going to dwell on that album, but will say that it’s straight-forward BDM with a raw sound that’s capable of captivating from the get-go. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): YSGAROTH — “STORM OVER A BLACK SEA”

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Nov 122020
 

 

It’s well-known that we host a lot of premieres at our site — every day, in fact. It requires a lot of effort since we always accompany them with reviews, and that can detract from other things we might be doing instead. But one reason we’re so open to them is the opportunity they provide to introduce not just you, but us as well, to music we might otherwise overlook. And sometimes, those opportunities prove to be rapturous discoveries — which is the case with Ysgaroth’s album Storm Over A Black Sea, which is set for release tomorrow.

Simply put, the album is an enormous surprise, an unexpected gem that arrives without much advance fanfare. It is, after all, this Vancouver trio’s debut album. But they’re not taking tentative steps here. The songs are remarkably ambitious in their construction and remarkably demanding in their execution. Fortunately, the instrumental skill displayed here is at a very high level, and the songcraft, while elaborately multi-faceted and wide-ranging in its stylistic scope, is thrilling to behold. Continue reading »

BELTEZ: “A GREY CHILL AND A WHISPER”

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Nov 122020
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the German band Beltez, which was released on October 30th by Avantgarde Music.)

What is it about the German Black Metal scene which makes it such a hive of activity and vitality?

Far from the cliched, mechanistic precision which so many still hold as their primary preconception of the country, in my experience it’s awash with bands as emotive and progressive as they are corrosive and aggressive, from the creative complexity of Bethlehem to the ever-evolving darkness of Ultha, from the introverted intensity and extroverted extremity of Infestus and Imha Tarikat to the keening catharsis of Der Weg Einer Freiheit and the gloomy grimness of Farsot… and beyond.

With their last album, 2017’s Exiled, Punished… Rejected, Cologne quintet Beltez took their listeners on an emotional roller-coaster of pitch-black fury and white-hot anguish, which firmly put their name on the map.

But, as good as that record was, A Grey Chill and a Whisper is another beast entirely, one which finds the band expanding their creative vision, adding new shades to their emotional palette and new shapes to their mental architecture, and stretching their skills and their songwriting like never before. Continue reading »

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