A DIRTY HALF DOZEN (SHORT BUT SWEET EDITION)

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 252019
 

 

(In this column Andy Synn compiles reviews and streams of six new EPs — by Engulf, Lvcifyre, Maladie, Ordeals, Phobocosm, and Ultha.)

Damn, today is a busy one for big releases isn’t it?

We’ve got Alcest, The Great Old Ones, Vastum, Leprous, Hour of Penance, Fit for an Autopsy, Vacivus (more on them soon), Dawn Ray’d, and about a bajillion others all coming out on the same day.

So, to address this overload of new albums… I’ve decided to write a piece covering a bunch of recently released EPs instead.

Who said I wasn’t helpful? Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOLDEN BATS — “VII”

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Oct 252019
 

 

Roughly one year ago the distinctive one-man mauling machine known as Golden Bats, then located in the vicinity of Brisbane, Australia, released an album named Residual Dread, the first official full-length after more than a dozen demos, splits, and EPs dating back to 2011. As recounted in this review, it was a titanically heavy album, steeped in a kind of gothic gloom, and so haunting in its laments that it threatened to split the heart even as it was splintering bone. With both a persistently brutal punch and an emotionally devastating conveyance of grief and pain, the music repeatedly hit home with staggering force on multiple levels. The songs were mainly slow or mid-paced, and relatively simple in their composition, but the music was tuned like a Stradivarius of suffering, supremely well-calculated to deliver punishment with tremendous primal force, and the songs so well-written that they were very hard to forget.

Since then, Golden Bats‘ alter ego Geordie Stafford has moved to Rome, Italy (just a couple of months ago), and is nearing completion of a follow-up album. In the meantime, he has decided to release some of his older but previously un-released creations, the first of which we’re premiering today. Denominated VII, to place it in line with a sequence of earlier demos, it includes four tracks, two of which are covers, and all of which again demonstrate the crushing power and mind-bending, emotionally wrenching impact of Golden Bats‘ formulation of sludge. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PRAISE THE PLAGUE — “TORMENT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 252019
 

 

We would like to offer two rounds of applause to begin this premiere. The first goes to Berlin’s Praise the Plague for the wrenching emotional power channeled by their song “Torment“. The second is for Sven Liebold, whose surreal video for the song is a nightmarish feast for the eyes, one of those ever-changing visual collages that you can’t look away from, and which in this case integrates frighteningly well with the music.

The song comes from a two-track EP by Praise the Plague that was released digitally, and on vinyl by Argonauta Records, on September 13th. Entitled Antagonist II, it follows the band’s debut full-length Antagonist, which was released last year. Both tracks are powerful mood-changers, amalgams of black metal and doom that have the capacity to make you forget about whatever you were doing or feeling before listening, and to transport you into the indigo-dark dimensions where this band dwell. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MUR — “BRUTALISM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Oct 242019
 

 

With their self-titled debut EP released in 2014, the French band Mur (whose six-person line-up includes former members of Today is the Day, Glorior Belli, Mass Hysteria, Comity, and Four Question Marks) began feeling their way, searching for an identity for their music and beginning to establish one. When you listen to their new full-length record, Brutalism, which will be released on October 25th by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions, it becomes apparent that they have arrived — at a place where their confidence is strong and their identity (albeit a multi-faceted one) well-defined. It isn’t so much a sea-change in sound compared to the EP as it is a giant, adventurous stride ahead on the path they began five years ago.

The album is a fascinating experience because it is such a dynamic one. It offers constant surprises, but does so without losing the bonds that forge all the experiences together into a whole, and without sacrificing the explosive, searing intensity that’s the main hallmark of the record. Previously we premiered a song from the album (“Third“) and separately reviewed another one (“I See Through Stones”), but today we have for you a stream of the complete album — and a few more impressionistic thoughts about the music (okay, more than a few). Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ODIOSORDO — “CON IL BUIO NEL SANGUE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Oct 232019
 

 

We’re told that “Odio Sordo” is the Italian translation for “Deaf Hate”, a phrase that connotes bitterness, fury, holding a grudge. And while the Italian trio Odiosordo have embraced those words in their name, and those sensations in their musical hybrid of hardcore and black metal, their new album Con Il Buio Nel Sangue becomes a musical journey in which different experiences also come to the surface. As they tell us, the name they’ve chosen represents internal struggle against personal challenges — “born by the need of merging a strong sense of discomfort, deep disorientation, but also the will of fighting back and finding a way through life.”

As you will have probably guessed by now, the music isn’t “easy listening”. It’s raw, bleak, and ravaging, stripped of pretense, authentic in its channeling of despair and rage, and of misery and defiance. Alternately bruising, oppressive, searing in its intensity, and soaring in its grasp for a way out of harrowing times, it proves to be a relentlessly gripping experience — and we’re giving you the chance to learn that for yourselves through our full-album stream today, before the record’s October 31 release by Third I Rex, VBMF (Italy), and the Third I Rex affiliate, Imperatrix Mundi Records. Continue reading »

ALCEST: “SPIRITUAL INSTINCT”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  3 Responses »
Oct 232019
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the French duo Alcest, which will be released by Nuclear Blast this coming Friday, October 25th.)

Back in the days of yore, it was commonly believed that the world we inhabit, the terrestrial sphere, was surrounded and permeated by an omnipresent, invisible essence called aether.

More fundamental than earth, more intangible than wind, more primal than fire, and more fluid than water, the search for this unseen fifth element (which, thanks to Luc Besson, we now know was actually “love” all along) consumed the lives of many of the most prominent scientists, thinkers, and philosophers of the time but, ultimately, was all for naught.

Of course, if they’d had access to the music of Alcest then the results might have been very different. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DENIAL OF GOD — “THE HALLOW MASS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
Oct 222019
 

 

Denial of God are a distinctive presence in the long ranks of black metal bands. For one thing, the Danish brothers Azter (guitars) and Ustumallagam (vocals) have been creating music under that name since 1991. Apart from the fact that few bands have lasted so long, Denial of God have also crafted an unusual aesthetic for their music, moving in increasingly cinematic and theatrical directions, with a pronounced supernatural atmosphere, that has given birth to the description of their creations as “Black Horror Metal”.

Seven long years have passed since the band’s last album, Death and the Beyond, with only The Shapeless Mass EP (released this past June) as a sign of renewed activity. That EP was intended as a springboard into a new full-length, and that new album is now fast approaching. Entitled The Hallow Mass, it will be jointly released by Osmose Productions and Hells Headbangers this coming Friday, October 25th, and today it’s our privilege to bring you a complete stream of this massive new work. Continue reading »

PULVERIZED: “FALSUS IN UNO, FALSUS IN OMNIBUS”

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Oct 222019
 

 

(Here’s Vonlughlio’s review of the first full-length by the Filipino death metal band Pulverized.)

Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus has proven to be a great surprise this year. Released by Pathologically Explicit Recordings on October 20th, it’s the debut album by the brutal death metal band Pulverized, who hail from the Philippines.

The band have been active since 2015. Their first EP, Realm of Sufferance in 2016, was an example of raw, in-your-face, straightforward BDM that captivated me right away, and they followed that with a 2017 demo the includes three songs which are also on the debut album. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TYRANT GOATGALDRAKONA — “MARQUIS OF EVIL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 212019
 

 

In the ten years that have elapsed since the formation of Tyrant Goatgaldrakona, this Hungarian death metal duo have been measured in their release of music, with only one album (2013’s Horns In The Dark) and a pair of EPs to see the cold light of day since 2009. But now there’s a third EP on the horizon, a two-track offering named Marquis of Evil that’s set for an October 25th release on 7″ vinyl by Blood Harvest Records — and we have a full stream of it, in all its monstrous glory, for you today.

As trained medical professionals, we strongly advise you to get your neck loose before listening to the opening song, “Conspiracy With Marquis“. Okay, we’re not really trained medical professionals, but we still know sore-neck-trauma when we feel it, and this track is a merciless neck-wrecker — though it doesn’t begin that way. Continue reading »

HOUR OF PENANCE: “MISOTHEISM”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 212019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Italian death metal band Hour of Penance, which is set for release on October 25th by Agonia Records.)

Being in a band is hard. I can tell you that right now. Simply being good at what you do isn’t enough to guarantee you’re going to be successful (whatever that means).

Truth be told there’s a lot more involved than just being able to string together a series of sick riffs, including (although many don’t like to admit it) a fair bit of luck and good fortune.

But being able to build an actual career out of your music is even harder still. It takes all those aspects alluded to above – skill, luck, ambition – and more.

Perhaps most importantly it takes perseverance, and an ability to weather all the ups and downs, the false-starts and set-backs, that come with the territory. And, even then, lots of bands still don’t make it (through no fault of their own).

All this is a long-winded way of saying that it’s very rare indeed for bands to make it as far as Hour of Penance have here, with the imminent release of their eighth album, Misotheism. Continue reading »

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