A DUAL REVIEW: NAPALM DEATH (“LOGIC RAVAGED BY BRUTE FORCE”) / HUMAN SERPENT (“SHROUDS”)

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 042020
 

 

(In this column DGR has combined reviews of two EPs, both of which are out now, one by Napalm Death and a charitable endeavor released by the Greek black metal band Human Serpent.)

 

NAPALM DEATH: “LOGIC RAVAGED BY BRUTE FORCE”

It’s wild to think that we’re a little over five years since the release of Apex Predator – Easy Meat, Napalm Death‘s most recent full-length album, but here we are with something new.

It’s always a bit of a struggle to review a Napalm Death disc. The band have become such a weirdly monolithic cultural force in the grind substratum of heavy metal that at this point you can almost take the band in sight unseen (or rather, sounds unheard) and know that the ever-prolific crew are going to find some way to beat your skull in. Yet across their immensely vast discography there remains a healthy bit of experimentation as the group fling themselves from the now traditional high-speed blasting grind to chunky death metal to songs with a fairly defined sense of groove to the noisier and more industrialized chaos that Apex Predator started to hint at. Continue reading »

CREMATIONS / DAWN PATROL / LACASTA

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Mar 042020
 


Cremations

 

(In this post Andy Synn combines reviews and streams of three albums released in February.)

Sticking to the theme which I’ve already established this week, here are a few words (and pictures, for those of you with a less literary disposition) on some recently released albums that err more towards the Hardcore side of the spectrum than our usual Death/Black/Doom fare.

First up we’ve got some heavyweight Metallic Hardcore from Hanover quartet Cremations, then there’s the punky, abrasive attack of Dawn Patrol, and, last but by no means least, the bristling blackened assault of Italy’s LaCasta.

So, something for (almost) everyone really. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TRAUMA — “OMINOUS BLACK”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Mar 032020
 

 

At a point in their long career when the Polish death metal band Trauma might be expected to slow down or even get stuck in their tracks, there is zero sign of malaise in their forthcoming eighth album, Ominous Black. Instead, they have created a record that’s explosively exuberant and persistently inventive.

To be sure, the music is unmistakably ferocious and fully capable of bludgeoning you black and blue, but what drives the album to heights of great fascination are all the head-spinning instrumental pyrotechnics and wildly mercurial permutations that mark the twisted path of each song. It’s almost tempting to call this music “progressive death metal”, except this album seems too weird and wondrous, and maybe even too malevolent, for that kind of label. On the other hand, just calling it “death metal” seems inadequate, because it’s so out of the ordinary in its ingenuity.

It’s our fiendish pleasure to throw a full stream of the album at you today, in advance of its March 6 release by Selfmadegod Records, and to imagine the looks on your faces when you figure out what’s happening to you. Continue reading »

MY DYING BRIDE: “THE GHOST OF ORION”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  1 Response »
Mar 032020
 

 

(DGR prepared this review of the new 13th album by My Dying Bride, which will be released on March 6th by Nuclear Blast.)

 

Releasing “Your Broken Shore” in advance of My Dying Bride‘s newest album The Ghost Of Orion may be one of the shrewdest moves in music history. The “holy shit, they’re onto something with this release” comes early on during The Ghost Of Orion — during the first growled chorus of “Your Broken Shore”. While the shifting dynamic from gothic melodrama to the oppressive heaviness that My Dying Bride conjure during that section of the song may be an easy thing to sketch out musically, denying just how hard that section hits is an exercise in futility.

It’s indisputable just how heavy that moment is, and it grabs you as a listener and basically holds you in place for the rest of the song — making a near-eight-minute journey fly by as the My Dying Bride crew really hammer home why they’ve had a career as long as they’ve had and how they’ve maintained the miserable engine that has kept them going.

It’s also something of a revelation, in that “Your Broken Shore” is so strong a song that you almost wouldn’t believe you’ve got another fifty-or-so minutes of music to dive into after it. You could even say that My Dying Bride started The Ghost Of Orion with a show-stopper — if the band hadn’t left other weapons laying around in The Ghost Of Orion‘s track list. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ULCERATE, NOMAD, LIKE RATS, HOT GRAVES, BOMBS OF HADES, CHURCH OF DISGUST, HOLY DEATH

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Mar 022020
 

 

At the risk of overloading our readers with new music in light of what we’ve already sent your way over the weekend and this morning (a risk that obviously means nothing to us), here’s a carefully curated collection of chaos to begin the new week. If death metal is your meat and potatoes, this will explode your gastrointestinal tract.

ULCERATE

It didn’t take long for a new Ulcerate song to cause a flurry of comments within our internal NCS group. Not long after the title track to the band’s new album surfaced this morning, my colleagues uttered such exclamations and opinions as “tasty”, “oh shit”, “this is probably the cleanest and least reliant they’ve been on recorded-in-a-cave-next-door style mixing they’ve had yet”, “it’s DEFINITELY more melodic, and the production is warmer, but those are GOOD things”, and “it’s a natural progression from what they were doing on Shrines of Paralysis“. Continue reading »

REMISSION: “THE TETHER’S END”

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Mar 022020
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s enthusiastic review of the debut album of Australia’s Remission, which was released late last year.)

While I’ve enjoyed the stylistic turn to a degree, melodic death metal in recent years has become too fucking slow and has increasingly lost its sense of technicality.  Everyone who knows me after years on this site is aware that I’m as much of a fan of the melodic death-doom formula as anyone, but I must confess I miss what got me captivated by the style in the first place.  It was the ability of the music to hit a threshold of being fast and technical, yet remaining emotive all the same.

The olden-days bands wrote riffs that were basically 20-second hooks, where the entire passage stuck into your head while skank beats and the like pounded away at high speed.  If it wasn’t that, it was an extremely modern translation of British Heavy Metal into an even heavier context.  I really miss this about melodic death metal of the ’90s and early 2000s, and it’s a bit dismaying that the style has mostly seemed to die off in interest.

Until now. Continue reading »

DEMONS & WIZARDS: “III”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  2 Responses »
Feb 282020
 

 

(This is Wil Cifer‘s review of the new album by Demons & Wizards, which unites the talents of Jon Schaffer (Iced Earth) and Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian) and was released by Century Media on February 21st.)

Fifteen years later and this project has returned.

Before we get into the meat of the metal here it should be said that I am pretty picky when it comes to power metal. This might surprise some since I grew up listening to the bands that influenced power metal. Even when Helloween came out with Keeper of the Seven Keys pt 2, I was still on board. The only problem was the bands who took inspiration from that album were too happy for me. Continue reading »

TURIA: “DEGEN VAN LICHT”

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Feb 272020
 

 

(This is Mike Johnson‘s review of the new album by the Dutch black metal band Turia, which was released by Eisenwald on February 14th.)

Feel the chill gnaw at the marrow of your bones, as you trudge through the frozen snow. Shards of ice feel sharper than obsidian as they tear away beneath your cloak. Each step a masochistic delight as the lure of the great grey summit beckons you forth.

It stands amongst its peers with a crown of haze masking its highest peaks. As time disappears the ascension up an unforgiving pass becomes a torrent of lunacy as the shadow of a giant looming over you blocks the sky. A sliver of hope emerges as the pass opens to reveal the sun, its soothing warmth brings a spark of euphoria before disappearing in the shadow of the natural obelisk towering above piercing the sky.

An atmosphere such as this, sonically, should be dissonant, unforgiving, and a relentless fury of pure despair. Turia, a Dutch black metal trio, portray a scene of majestic desolation weaving lush landscapes soaked in reverb into a serrated hail composed of vicious tremolo riffs. Continue reading »

BLACK ROYAL: “FIREBRIDE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Feb 262020
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Finland’s Black Royal, which was released by Suicide Records on February 14th.)

Maybe it’s just me (I don’t think it is, but you never know) but it seems like the last several years have seen quite a lot of bands, both old and new, turning back to the “old school” for inspiration.

And while there are lots of speculative, pseudo-psychological reasons for why this might be so (there’s certainly something to be said for the idea that during unsettling or uncertain times we’re more likely to cling to what’s familiar), I honestly think that the best explanation for this recent “old school” resurgence is that quite a lot of bands have simply grown dissatisfied with what more modern trends have to offer them (and, in turn, demand from them).

Of course, this isn’t necessarily anything all that new. Metal has, after all, often been quite an insular scene, with a large fixation on its own history, and practically every year sees the emergence of yet another wave of “retro” groups trying to recapture the spirit and the sound of Metal’s “golden age”… mostly without really adding anything to it.

But, of late, I’ve really taken note of how many bands have been trying to do more than just imitate the classics by taking and twisting them into fresh new shapes, repurposing clichéd ideas for new purposes, and by mixing and matching “timeless” elements in ways which would once have been unthinkable.

I’m sure we can all think of lots of current/recent examples of this (Chapel of Disease immediately spring to mind). But the one I want to bring your attention to today is the brilliant second album from Finnish riffmongers Black Royal. Continue reading »

LYCHGATE: “ALSO SPRACH FUTURA”

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Feb 252020
 

 

(This is Todd Manning‘s review of the new EP by the UK-based progressive black/doom band Lychgate, which will soon be released by Debemur Morti Productions.)

It’s getting hard to ignore Lychgate, not that anyone should be trying. This UK based Extreme Metal band continue to push their awe-inspiring blend of Black Metal, Death, and Doom into more progressive and experimental realms with each release, and their latest EP is a case in point. Also sprach Futura is due out on Debemur Morti Productions on March 13th and illustrates beyond any doubt that Lychgate is one of the most exciting bands going right now. Continue reading »

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