AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOATBLOOD — “APPARITION OF DOOMSDAY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Dec 202019
 

 

Two years ago when we premiered a demo by these two German devastators we wrote:

“There is little risk that you will be deceived about the music we’re about to present. The band’s name is Goatblood. The demo is named Gasmask Devastation Terror. The artwork depicts a bullet-draped demonic form shrouded in eldritch energies and fire. Biohazard and radiation warning signs would probably have been superfluous….

“Their brand of black/death metal is lo-fi filth, a toxic and insidious stew of grim, buzzing riffs, pounding chords, and muffled, clattering percussion. Solos leap from this morass of malignancy like crazed vipers made of flame and plutonium. The vocals are a roaring, shrieking horror — merciless and hollow-hearted….

“Goatblood haven’t forgotten the appeal of dynamics — but they also never lose sight of their lethal mission, which is to assault the senses and mangle the mind until it can see nothing but an apocalyptic wasteland.”

Since we wrote those words, Goatblood have released a 2018 EP (Arma Inferre), and now they’re on the verge of discharging their third full-length through Dunkelheit Produktionen. Fittingly entitled Apparition of Doomsday, it will bury the old year on December 27th — but we have a full stream of all its multifarious and nefarious depredations today. Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2019: CHERNAA / HYPNO5E / UNDER THE PLEDGE OF SECRECY

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 192019
 


Chernaa

 

(In this post Andy Synn combines reviews of three 2019 albums that we haven’t previously paid attention to with the thoroughness that they deserve.)

No big intro or preamble this time. Just three very cool albums delivering only the best in heart-stopping Post-Black Metal, cinematic Prog Metal, and rampaging Death Metal.

Prep your ears accordingly. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE BASTARD WITHIN — “BETTER DEAD THAN FRIENDS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 192019
 

 

Let’s cut to the chase: For a debut album, it’s astonishing just how good Better Dead Than Friends is. It would also be astonishing even if it were an album released by any top-shelf grindcore band far deeper into their career than the place where The Bastard Within find themselves, close to the beginning of their own. This isn’t completely shocking, given that the members of this group have made names for themselves in other bands already, but still… what they’ve accomplished on this first full-length is a big eye-opener.

Those members, spread around Italy and Switzerland, are vocalist CN Sid, guitarist Gianluca Sulpizio, and bassist Davide Stura, as well as American drummer extraordinaire Kevin Talley. And while all credit goes to them for Better Dead Than Friends, they’ve also augmented their formidable attack with an array of noteworthy guests on various tracks — Jason Netherton (Misery Index, Asphalt Graves), Trevor (Sadist), Juri Bianchi (Addiction, Any Face, Hayma), Mãra Lisenko (Mãra), and Stefania Minervino (Too Late, Cave, Spoiled). Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2019: DÖ / HELA / PÉNITENCE ONIRIQUE

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Dec 122019
 


DÖ

 

(Before the year wraps up, Andy Synn is continuing to help spread the word about 2019 albums to which we haven’t devoted sufficient attention — with three more given the spotlight in this post.)

Depending on what time, or what day, you’re reading this, there’s a chance I’ll either be onstage, setting up, or in transit, as this week we’re playing a short run of shows supporting Hour of Penance and Dāmim.

That’s not an attempt to brag, by the way, even though it is very cool, just an explanation as to why this will probably be the last thing you read from me this week, and why I’ll probably be even slower than usual at responding to any comments or questions.

What I’m going to leave you with is another triptych of meaty metallic morsels for you to sink your teeth into, including the psychedelic Cosmic Doom of DÖ, the gloomy glamour of Hela, and the blackened brilliance of Pénitence Onirique. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEAD WOMAN’S DITCH — “HRAEFN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 112019
 

 

Time dims memories. Two-and-a-half years is not an eon, but long enough that I managed to lose track of where the name Dead Woman’s Ditch came from. It was that long ago that we premiered a song from this UK band’s debut album, Seo Mere Saetan, subsequently released in August 2017 by Third I Rex. When I re-read that earlier post, the explanation chilled my skin all over again. To repeat: Continue reading »

UNSUNG HEROES OF 2019: CARONTE / IAPETUS / NAGA

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 092019
 

Caronte

 

(Andy Synn prepared this collection of reviews, covering three excellent 2019 albums to which we haven’t previously devoted sufficient attention.)

Despite promising to take some time off after last week’s orgy of lists here I am, back again, with more bands/albums for you to check out.

My plan, as it stands right now, is to spend the next week or two, if/when I can, catching up with a few bands who either missed out on last week’s year-end round-up, or who made the lists but haven’t received a full write-up here as of yet.

The reviews themselves may be a little shorter than usual, simply due to time constraints on my end, but hopefully they’ll prove just as insightful as ever. Cough…

Anyway, today we’ve got some groovesome Satanic Doom, some progressively inclined Melodeath, and some nasty Blackened Sludge, so there should be something for (almost) everyone to discover. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ISRATHOUM — “ARROWS FROM BELOW”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 092019
 

 

In wrestling with how to put impressions of Israthoum’s new album into words, the phrase “dead reckoning” popped into my disoriented mind. As a navigational technique, it’s a method of estimating where you are based on where you began, taking into account variables such as speed and direction over the course of the journey. In some circumstances, it might be the best you can do in determining your present position, but it’s prone to the accumulation of errors, and may leave you not knowing accurately where you are, or how to find your way back.

It’s a very “loose” metaphor, and one that applies more to my efforts to introduce the album stream than to the album itself. Arrows From Below is most definitely a journey — and a harrowing one at that, a journey of hellish upheaval and frightening revelation, both ruinous and numinous — but of course you can easily find your way back to the beginning, and re-trace the journey. On the other hand, from the experience of a listener, that journey is likely to leave you in a very different place emotionally than where you began, and at least in my case, also with only error-prone methods of trying to describe that end-position and what happened over the course of the album to produce the change. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): XANTAM — “ALTERED STATE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 042019
 

 

Altered State, the debut EP by the California project Xantam, creates dramatically contrasting sensations, but all of them seem separated from the familiar mundane world around us. The music hurls the listener into vortices of unchained madness and diabolical violence, but also pierces through into other haunting dimensions that seem extraterrestrial, or perhaps the nether realms of imagination. There is sweeping, hypnotic beauty to be found here, as well as tyrannical terrorism, but in all its manifestations the music is chilling (as well as exhilarating).

Xantam is the solo work of a California musician who has taken the name of a Beholder from the game of Baldur’s Gate. His first published work was the LifeDeathBeyond demo, reissued by Blood Harvest Records in 2016, and the same Blood Harvest will be releasing this new EP on Friday the 13th of December. We are pleased to give you a stream of the full experience today. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FAWN LIMBS — “THEIR HOLES AROUSED BY THE SPLINTERS CARVED FROM THEIR TEETH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Dec 032019
 

 

This past June we premiered a song named “Pines” from the debut album, Harm Remissions, by a trans-oceanic noise/grind trio named Fawn Limbs (presented through a video that excerpted footage from the 1933 film White Zombie). Even just that one song made a stunning impact, one that we likened to “the thrill of witnessing destruction… like the excitement of being present at the implosion of giant buildings to create space for something new”, but combined with “other thrills within the mayhem of the music which derive not from chaos but from the almost machine-like precision of their otherwise freakish demolition jobs”.

Those impressions might have seemed paradoxical, but while the track did indeed have its berserker destructive components, there was an impressive degree of precision on display as the musicians rapidly morphed from one kind of demolition to another (and delivered some unexpected groove along the way). The album as a whole — experienced as a whole — was (and is) an even more breathtaking bombardment, one that plays nasty games with your mind as this trio maniacally shift gears without warning and engage in even more extravagant displays of seething and boiling fretwork lunacy and rhythm-section interplay (along with unexpected digressions).

As the year draws to a close, Fawn Limbs have decided to give us one last blast with which to properly bury 2019 beneath rubble — a new EP that will be released on December 6th under the nightmarish title Their Holes Aroused by the Splinters Carved From Their Teeth — and today we’re bringing you a full stream of it. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEATH WOLF — “IV: COME THE DARK”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 032019
 

 

Why do noted musicians in well-established and well-known bands form side projects? There are many reasons, but certainly one of them is to pursue musical interests that lie beyond the stylistic boundaries of their main bands — sometimes far beyond them — often coupled with the chance to create and perform with different friends. Some side projects seem to vanish overnight, and some of them become such strong attachments for their members, or become so well-received by listeners, that they persist.

Death Wolf began as a side project, and it has persisted, and we are all the better for it. In this case, the project was started near the turn of the new millennium by Marduk guitarist Morgan Håkansson under the name Devil’s Whorehouse, and with his bandmates released two albums and two EPs under that name. After they changed the band’s name to Death Wolf, they released three more albums from 2011 through 2014.

Now a fourth one is at last ready for release on December 10th by Blooddawn Productions (distributed and marketed by Regain Records). Its name is IV: Come the Dark, and we’re proudly presenting a full stream of the album today. Continue reading »

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