OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): GÖDEN, HEAVEN SHALL BURN, VREDEHAMMER, BYTHOS, SLAVES BC, DUHKHA, THE RITE, DERANGED

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Mar 222020
 

 

I’m still working my way through that list of 80 potentially interesting new songs and full releases that I mentioned in Part 1 of this big round-up. Of course, not all of those 80 are going to pass my smell test, and I couldn’t write about all of them even if they did. But there’s still a lot I want to recommend, and so with the exception of the first item below, I’ll just be offering brief impressions along with the streams.

If all goes as planned, there will be a Part 3 tomorrow. A SHADES OF BLACK column will follow this one today, whenever I finish writing it.

GÖDEN (U.S.)

From 1989 to 1994 Winter released only one demo tape (Hour of Doom), one album (Into Darkness), and one EP (Eternal Frost), and nothing since then. But those recordings were enough to cement their place in the history of extreme metal and to become the jumping-off point for countless other bands in the doom and sludge genres for the last 30 years. And thus when Svart Records announced weeks ago that it would be releasing an album by a band it characterized as “a long-awaited continuation of what Winter would have been”, I sat up and paid attention. Continue reading »

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

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Mar 202020
 

 

On March 24th W.T.C. Productions will release the long-awaited fifth album by the German black metal band Membaris. Eight years is indeed a long time in between records, and that’s how much time has elapsed since their last one, Entartet. But holy hell, the return they have made with Misanthrosophie is nothing short of spectacular.

To crib from some of the many words to follow in an introductory review, there is a theatrical quality to the album as a whole, like a fantastical Baroque pageant that seems to put the richness of humanity, in all its wildly swinging emotions — its madness and its never-ending grief, its joy and absurdity, its soulful poignancy and heedless cruelty — onto a grand stage. And to do this Membaris have seamlessly incorporated a wide range of musical styles across many decades, from both metal and rock, into their thorned framework of black metal. Every song holds wondrous surprises and thrilling experiences, every one of them fueled with undeniable passion and executed with tremendous skill. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: AVERSIO HUMANITATIS — “THE WANDERER OF ABSTRACT PATHS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 202020
 

 

Within the ever-expanding realms of black metal there are bands who will always be content to follow the old, well-trod paths, from the grim sounds of cold northern darkness to the vicious, thrusting revels that are fueled by hate and inspired by the worship of demons.

But there are others whose ambitions are greater, who seem to extend their reach toward vistas beyond our time and outside our tangible plane of existence, who seek to manifest visions that can’t be put into words, to channel forces beyond our normal perceptions, and to up-end the minds of listeners at the same time. To be sure, this kind of music may also be spawned by disgust for humankind and hatred for the chains with which some bind others, or with which we bind ourselves. But the music seeks not only to capture the dystopian terrors brought about by our own deeply flawed natures but also to cast off and transcend such imprisonments.

Which brings us to the new album by Aversio Humanitatis, and the song from the album we’re presenting today. Continue reading »

A DOUBLE REVIEW (PART 2): WOMBBATH — “CHOIRS OF THE FALLEN”

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Mar 202020
 

 

(Yesterday DGR turned in a double-review, but in his own inimitable fashion he wrote so many words about each of the two albums — one by Berzerker Legion and one by Wombbath — that your humble editor decided to split it in two, and now we present the second one. It may make some sense to read the other review first (here), since these were originally packaged together.)

Over the many years that we’ve spent in our comfortable little corner of the internet, one of the things we’ve learned how to get real good at is identifying genre-fare: the sort of musical red meat where it is clear the crew behind them just want to add to the overall cauldron that is their music of choice. Not necessarily the most ambitious or ‘paradigm changing’ — though the times where a group lands on that sort of lightning-in-a-bottle formula is always great — but music that is enjoyable for what it is, well-executed within the blueprint of its chosen genre.

One of the examples of this which practically fuels this website is the sort of rock-stupid, pulsating thud of death metal that gets by purely by appealing to the early cave-dweller parts of our brain, and another is the type of music that is so predisposed to headbanging guitar work that you can’t help but want to tag along, whether or not you have the long hair for it.

In this case it’s weird that these two albums feel like catching up a bit, since these two projects share a vocalist whom we’ve written about numerous times before and both of them are right in that wheelhouse described above. One is more modern and melody-focused despite its overall insistence on how world-ending it paints its protagonists in the songs, and the other is flavored with apocalyptic flair but with the chainsaw guitar aimed at a more old-school crowd. And thus we find ourselves catching up with Berzerker Legion and a crew more familiar to our site’s readers, Wombbath. Continue reading »

DEATH METAL DISCOVERIES: AFTERBIRTH / APEP / CLIENTS / KONVENT / PESTIFER / PURNAMA

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 192020
 


Afterbirth

 

(In this post Andy Synn provides reviews of six recent albums, all of them leaning in different deathly directions.)

As a companion piece to last week’s Black Metal Bonanza, and a follow-up to Monday’s Death Metal focussed “Short But Sweet” article, here’s a bunch of Death Metal artists/albums to help keep you all sane during these unsettled times. Continue reading »

A DOUBLE REVIEW (PART 1): BERZERKER LEGION — “OBLITERATE THE WEAK”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 192020
 

 

(DGR turned in a double-review, but in his own inimitable fashion he wrote so many words about each of the two albums that your humble editor decided to split it in two, and the second review will be posted a bit later today.)

Over the many years that we’ve spent in our comfortable little corner of the internet, one of the things we’ve learned how to get real good at is identifying genre-fare: the sort of musical red meat where it is clear the crew behind them just want to add to the overall cauldron that is their music of choice. Not necessarily the most ambitious or ‘paradigm changing’ — though the times where a group lands on that sort of lightning-in-a-bottle formula is always great — but music that is enjoyable for what it is, well-executed within the blueprint of its chosen genre.

One of the examples of this which practically fuels this website is the sort of rock-stupid, pulsating thud of death metal that gets by purely by appealing to the early cave-dweller parts of our brain, and another is the type of music that is so predisposed to headbanging guitar work that you can’t help but want to tag along, whether or not you have the long hair for it.

In today’s case it’s weird that these two albums feel like catching up a bit, since these two projects share a vocalist whom we’ve written about numerous times before and both of them are right in that wheelhouse described above. One is more modern and melody-focused despite its overall insistence on how world-ending it paints its protagonists in the songs, and the other is flavored with apocalyptic flair but with the chainsaw guitar aimed at a more old-school crowd. And thus we find ourselves catching up with Berzerker Legion and a crew more familiar to our site’s readers, Wombbath. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RAIDER — “GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 182020
 

 

Straight out of Waterloo, Ontario comes the ferocious death/thrashing band Raider, who in very short order have established themselves as a force to be reckoned with, with nitroglycerine in their veins, demons in their heads, and the kind of machine precision in their execution that only makes their mayhem more electrifying.

They popped a lot of eyes wide open with their 2018 demo, Urge to Kill, and opened more eyes when they followed that with festival appearances at Hamilton Deathfest, Guelph Deathfest, and Kitchener Metalfest. What they’ve now done, however, is even more explosive. We’re talking about their debut album, Guardian of the Fire, which will be released on March 20th. The singles released so far from the album have already generated a lot of excitement, but now we’ve got the full thrill-ride for you as we premiere a stream of the entire record. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: ABYSMAL DAWN, CENTINEX, COGNITIVE, COOLING TOWER, DEATH COURIER, DEVIN TOWNSEND, EVOKER, GRAVEIR, HELLHOOKAH, KRATER, LAMB OF GOD, LAUDARE, MALICYST, WHITE STONES

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Mar 182020
 


Abysmal Dawn

 

Here we are again. with so many new songs and videos that I want to recommend that I’m resorting to what I did last weekend — compiling lots of sights and sounds (which are all over the map in genre terms), accompanied by only very brief comments of my own. I also added one news item that excited me, though there’s no music to be heard yet.

I should add that I hope you are all well, and that you’re doing your damnedest to physically stay away from other people to the greatest extent possible.

ABYSMAL DAWN (U.S.)

We begin with a jackhammering, shivering, and slithering piece of death metal menace, complete with thoroughly beastly vocals and twisted melodic accents and grooves that both prove to be ridiculously catchy. I could swear they actually used a heavy-caliber machibe gun instead of drums for parts of this, and that they tortured a poltergeist for the solos. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BOG WRAITH / MÆRE / PHALANX / SUTRAH / SVENGAHLI

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 162020
 

 

(Andy Synn has decided to collect in one place reviews of five recently released EPs that have provoked very enthusiastic responses. Lots of very good stuff here.)

After spending a significant amount of time last week covering some massive (some might say excessive) double-albums, I thought it might be nice to kick things off this week with a bunch of shorter releases, all of which sit somewhere along the ever-widening spectrum of Death Metal.

So whether you’re looking for something brutal and breakdown-heavy, something crusty and crushing, or something teched-out and transcendent, there should be something for everyone here. Continue reading »

SPECTRAL LORE / MARE COGNITUM – “WANDERERS: ASTROLOGY OF THE NINE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 132020
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the ambitious new double album created by Mare Cognitum (California) and Spectral Lore (Greece), which is being released today by I, Voidhanger Records and features cover art by Elijah Tamu.)

Call me a glutton for punishment, but not only is this the second double-album I’m reviewing this week, but it’s actually even longer than the first one!

What makes it different (very different, in fact) is that rather than being the product of just one band’s vision, Wanderers: Astrology of the Nine (and that’s the last time I’m going to be typing that in full) is a split-release from two artists, Spectral Lore and Mare Cognitum, each of whom contributes a full album’s worth of blistering blackened riffage and eerie, extraterrestrial atmosphere.

But wait, there’s more! Not only is the album arranged very differently to a traditional split – instead of grouping the songs by band they’re arranged (mostly) in an alternating pattern, loosely following the order of the planets in our solar system – but the final two tracks are in fact the result of a collaborative effort designed to fuse the best parts of both artists into one collective whole.

Of course, the problem with shooting for the stars is that there’s a lot that can go wrong out there in the formless void… so the question is, have Spectral Lore and Mare Cognitum found a way to boldly go where no band has gone before, or is this one giant leap too far? Continue reading »

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