DGR’S MULTI-BAND REVIEW NIGHTMARE (PART 3): LIK, DECONSTRUCTING SEQUENCE, QUASARBORN

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 252018
 

 

(DGR delivered a tome of reviews so massive that we decided to serialize it throughout the week so as to avoid fracturing your spine beneath its weight. This is Part 3.)

On occasion we find ourselves backlogged with albums that we want to write about but seem never able to find the time to do so. Sometimes this results in multiple review ideas getting tossed and never revisited, and at other times you get posts like this one as we deseperately try to hammer out a whole bunch of reviews about EVERYTHING that we’ve been listening to.

In this case that means 13 different releases, unsorted by genre and from all varying walks of all things heavy. So, with the floodgates now fully open, let us wade further forth into the rushing waters of heavy metal to recommend some stuff that perhaps might have flown by you.

LiK – Carnage

Every once in a while I pull the curtain back to reveal what the reveiw-writing process is like on this end, and Lik’s newest album Carnage provides the occasion for one of those times. It has been exceedingly difficult for me to review this album, not because Carnage is bad but because I have a very hard time with albums that are very clear about what they are trying to be, and when they nail that note so specifically and so well, it’s hard to talk about them without coming off as being on some sort of high horse. Continue reading »

DEATH RITUALS (PART 2): DIRE OMEN, UN, BINAH, PARASITE INC., IN DEMONI, GASH

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jul 252018
 

 

This is the completion of a post I began yesterday, collecting new songs and videos that by coincidence all happened to fall under the vast umbrella of death metal, or were at least close enough in sound or spirit to merit the “DEATH RITUAL” heading of this post. Between yesterday and today, one more track appeared that I couldn’t resist including, and I also decided to begin with a review of a new EP that I should have posted sooner — but better late than never.

DIRE OMEN

Our history with Dire Omen goes back to 2011, when I came across their second promo and wrote it up in the 27th MISCELLANY post (and I’m wondering yet again why I let that series die of neglect). Since then, they’ve released a 2012 EP (Severing Soul From Flesh), a 2014 debut album on the Dark Descent label (Wresting the Revelation of Futility), and now a new EP (also through Dark Descent), Formless Fire Embodied. Obviously, these Canadians from Edmonton haven’t been prolific in their releases, but the care they’ve taken hasn’t been for naught, as you shall see. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SHED THE SKIN — “WE OF SCORN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jul 242018
 

 

It takes a lot of skill and a lot of experience to do what Cleveland’s Shed the Skin have done, to make a death metal album that sounds like a heavy metal classic right out of the box, a fist-pumping, mosh-triggering, high-octane thing that’s part-anthem and part-homage to venerated traditions, but doesn’t come off as a formulaic re-tread. It has authentic spirit, tremendous energy — and it’s damned vicious, too. You can see the miles on those faces up above, but the wear plainly hasn’t worn them out — far from it.

The experience shows on the faces, but it’s on their resumes, too. This veteran line-up consists of Kyle Severn of Incantation on drums, Matt Sorg of Ringworm and Blood of Christ on guitars, Ash Thomas of Faithxtractor and Vladimirs on vocals and guitar, and Ed Stephens from Vindicator on bass. Together, they’ve created something special with this second album, We Of Scorn, which will be released by Hells Headbangers on July 27th and which you’ll get a chance to hear in full, below the following blocks of laudatory text. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DIS ORCUS — “SOMNAMBULISTIC VISIONS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 242018
 

 

Most of us who are devoted to music from the black realms have at least a vague idea of what’s intended by the phrase “atmospheric black metal”. That’s probably not the correct genre description for Somnambulistic Visions, the debut album by the Ukrainian band Dis Orcus, yet the music is so persistently creepy, so cold, so stricken with a feeling of encroaching inhuman horror, that its success in creating a nightmarish, vampiric atmosphere is one of its signal accomplishments. True darkness is to be found here.

The songs are almost entirely mid-paced, the reverberating drums devoted to relatively simple rhythms that are somewhere between rocking and ritualistic. There’s virtually no blasting, no displays of physical excess. The beats are not exactly metronomic — they’re too unpredictable for that, too peppered with short snapping tones and bursts of double-bass rumble or martial tattoos — but they don’t get in the way of the main design of the music, which (as I perceive it) is to freeze the blood and to draw the mind into a hideous hallucination. (At the same time, however, they’re very effective in getting your head moving.) Continue reading »

DGR’S MULTI-BAND REVIEW NIGHTMARE (PART 2): INFRACTION, AXIS OF DESPAIR, JOURNAL

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 242018
 

 

(DGR delivered a tome of reviews so massive that we decided to serialize it throughout the week so as to avoid fracturing your spine beneath its weight. This is Part 2.)

On occasion we find ourselves backlogged with albums that we want to write about but seem never able to find the time to do so. Sometimes this results in multiple review ideas getting tossed and never revisited,  and at other times you get posts like this one as we deseperately try to hammer out a whole bunch of reviews about EVERYTHING that we’ve been listening to.

In this case that means 13 different releases, unsorted by genre and from all varying walks of all things heavy. So, with the floodgates now fully open, let us wade forth into the rushing waters of heavy metal to recommend some stuff that perhaps might have flown by you.

Infraction – Poshumous Release

It’s rare that we ge to type such a phrase but that’s the fun of writing about music, so here we go: You can blame Gadget for this one.

Continue reading »

SLIDHR: “THE FUTILE FIRES OF MAN”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 232018
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Slidhr, which was released by Ván Records on June 26th.)

I’ve seen it written in a few places over the last couple of months that 2018 hasn’t yet produced the same plethora of quality Black Metal releases that previous years have done.

And while there are undoubtedly multiple exceptions to this rule which we could all name at the drop of a hat (the new Funeral Mist, for one), for the most part I can see where these people are coming from, as this year has felt a little bit light on the ol’ brimstone and blasphemy front so far.

Thankfully however, the new album by Irish/Icelandic iconoclasts Slidhr is more than capable of rebalancing the scales in this regard. Continue reading »

DGR’S MULTI-BAND REVIEW NIGHTMARE (PART 1): HUMAN SERPENT, PRESIDENT STREETWALKER, GIANT OF THE MOUNTAIN

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 232018
 

 

(DGR delivered a tome of reviews so massive that we decided to serialize it throughout the week so as to avoid fracturing your spine beneath its weight.)

On occasion we find ourselves backlogged with albums that we want to write about but seem never able to find the time to do so. Sometimes this results in multiple review ideas getting tossed and never revisited,  and at other times you get posts like this one as we deseperately try to hammer out a whole bunch of reviews about EVERYTHING that we’ve been listening to.

Our own Andy Synn is particularly good at this, I, however, am not. Thus, in an effort to clean up the 11 different text files I had sitting on my desktop of half-written reviews seemingly going nowhere before I got distracted by the next thing that would wind up half-written before I made a vain effort to go back to an earlier review in order to finish that up, we find ourselves with a collection of shorter and sweeter reviews. I’ll still attempt to deep dive on the discs, but overall this is just a collection of every awesome thing I’ve been listening to that we haven’t taken the time to fully discuss yet.

In this case that means 13 different releases (rather than 11), unsorted by genre and from all varying walks of all things heavy. So, with the floodgates now fully open, let us wade forth into the rushing waters of heavy metal to recommend some stuff that perhaps might have flown by you. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: MANGLER, GULCH, BEAST JESUS

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jul 222018
 

 

It’s Sunday, and yes we will have a SHADES OF BLACK post a bit later today (a two-parter), but first I thought I’d shoehorn in a trio of way-under-the-radar EPs that I’ve been enjoying recently, in an attempt to boost their radar profile.

MANGLER

The opening moments of “Carrion Mother” sound sort of like the equivalent of someone revving a big Harley right before it surges from a stop. It builds anticipation, and then pays off viciously. The song becomes a malicious thrashing romp with bursts of nasty braying melody and a very nasty acid snarler behind the mic, too. It gets your own internal pistons going hard as it thunders down the highway, throwing off sparks and trailing flames. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: SENZAR AND ONTOGENY

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jul 202018
 

 

I really wanted to end this week with a big fat juicy round-up, overstuffed with new songs and videos that I’ve latched onto over the past week but couldn’t cram into other round-ups over the last two days. Alas, I’ve run out of time. But rather than just scuttle morosely out of sight, head down and small tears dribbling down my cheeks, I thought I’d at least give you a couple of quick hits.

SENZAR

Today the Irish band Senzar, which rose from the ashes of Coldwar and embraced a name reportedly based upon the works of different philosophers, including Ernst Cassirer and Russian occultist Helena Blavatsky, released their first EP, which has their name on it but has no title, through Hostile Media.

After seeing a press release I had made a note a few days ago to check out a new video the band had released, but it wasn’t until receiving encouragement from starkweather’s Rennie today that I did so, and then moved from there to the EP as a whole. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DRAGHKAR — “THE ENDLESS HOWLING ABYSS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 202018
 

 

After releasing a 2017 demo and a pair of 2018 splits on the Blood Harvest label (with Desekryptor and Ossuarium), the Los Angeles-based death metal trio Draghkar are now just one week away from the release of a new EP, appropriately named The Endless Howling Abyss. It’s a four-track effort that will be available digitally, with a CD release by Craneo Negro Records and a cassette tape release by Nameless Grave Records, but we’re giving you a chance to stream the EP today.

While Draghkar’s first release spawned references to old school, cavernous death metal in a kindred spirit to such modern practitioners as Grave Miasma and Tomb Mold, the new EP is a more violent and hard-charging affair that draws influence from early Greek black and death metal, as well as the likes of such other old-school progenitors as Molested and Mercyful Fate. The music on this outing displays a kind of wild, ecstatic savagery, with a feverishness that matches its cruelty. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries