(Wil Cifer reviews the new split by Louisiana’s Barghest and California’s Teeth.)
This is a split that captures two different shades of metal. They are both dark.
The first side of this cassette release showcases Baton Rogue’s Barghest, who are just as feral as in their earlier releases, but this time around the buzz-saw of rapid fire guitar you face is smoothed out by the more cavernous production, giving them the needed ambience for me to fully digest their sonic venom. Continue reading »
No, this post isn’t about the new Mithras album, though it has been on my mind lately. It’s about a listening experience I had late last night (after possibly drinking too much), when the music fell into place as if it had been ordained by some ingenious higher power. I feel compelled to share it, not only because of how good each piece in the chain is, standing alone, but also because of the interesting ways in which each piece flows into the next and eventually comes back around to join together, the end resonating with the beginning in an unexpected way.
I’ll tell the story of how I came to move from each of these four recordings to the next precisely in the order set out below, because at least to me it makes this playlist even more strange and wondrous. And to be clear, the connections between the recordings aren’t predictable — it’s more like an evolution, progression, and transformation that’s occurring instead of a collection of like-sounding songs — with things becoming increasingly heavy and extreme. By the end, I had bought all four of the releases on Bandcamp.
KINIT HER
This experience began last night when I happened upon a Facebook post by metal writer and musician JR (I haven’t told the people involved in this story that I’m writing about them, so I’ll be using initials instead of full names). In it, he linked to a just-released new album by Kinit Her, calling it “magic”. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Tasmania’s Départe.)
So this is the point where I would usually say something about how great the last few years have been in terms of Australia’s Metal exports, coupled with some tongue-in-cheek reference to the country’s proclivity for producing some of the world’s most vicious and venomous creatures… the Box Jellyfish, the Eastern Brown Snake, Mel Gibson… ok, I know that last one’s originally from America, but cut me some slack ok? It’s hard to be funny when you’ve just had your eardrums pummelled and your soul scalded by an album like Failure, Subside. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn delivers his first impressions of Meshuggah’s new album, The Violent Sleep of Reason, with thoughts on a track-by-track basis as well as overall.)
Despite what some of their detractors might say, every Meshuggah album is different. The basic ingredients might stay the same, but each album leans in a slightly different direction… Nothing brought the groove, Catch 33 went all experimental, obZen was the overtly “technical” album, and Koloss the more song-based, riff-based number… which is why every Meshuggah album is ultimately going to be someone’s favourite Meshuggah album.
So the big question really isn’t “how good is The Violent Sleep of Reason?”… no, what we should be asking is “what sort of album is it…?”
With that in mind I decided that, this time around, it would be more fun to eschew the traditional review format and instead just note down my first impressions and overall musings about the album as I listened to it. So, just as Meshuggah went for a more raw and “organic” approach this time (doing it all live in the studio for the first time in their career), so too am I going to produce a much more raw and unedited piece of writing while I listen to it.
Of course I reserve the right to change my position in the future, but for now… let’s just see what happens! Continue reading »
(Andy Synn brings us a new installment in his series of album reviews in haiku. Three reviews of three lines each come after the jump. With music, of course.)
Despite what I’ve seen suggested by certain slightly ill-informed commenters recently, Metal’s obsession with space and the vast potential and possibilities of the great beyond is nothing new.
Let’s be honest for a second – a bunch of the genre’s progenitors were massive nerds who stole took inspiration from some of sci-fi’s biggest (and some not so big) names to feed their lyrics and concepts, and this basically laid the groundwork for everyone from Agalloch to Obscura to Wormed to draw their own inspirations from the same deep well, be it the pulpiest of science fiction or the hardest of science fact. Sometimes both.
So for the latest edition of this column I’ve selected three fantastic albums which, to date, haven’t been covered properly here on NCS, each of which firmly and confidently puts its own spin on the great interstellar enigma and our place as insignificant motes of fleeting life within the vast and unending void. Continue reading »
(Our friend Grant Skelton prepared this review of the self-titled debut album by Poland’s Monasterium.)
I have yet to reach satiety when it comes to doom metal. Each new release I come across only seems to whet my appetite rather than quench it. Perhaps a hearty diet of doom simply begets a desire for even more doom. And since I dine daily on doom, I discovered a gem of an album from Poland’s Monasterium. Their self-titled album is currently available from Greek label No Remorse Records.
The stoneclad cover art by Michal “Xaay” Loranc depicts a skeletal coat-of-arms. This banner seems to mark a threshold that, once crossed, will entreat the listener on a journey throughout various mythologies of history. Lyrically, the songs featured on this debut deal with subjects such as martyrdom (“Christening In Blood”), persecution (“A Hundredfold Cursed”), and human sacrifice (“In The Shrine Of The Jackal God”). The liner notes also feature seven unique drawings to accompany each of the seven tracks. Loranc’s artwork adds a deeper dimension to each of the tracks, allowing the listener a visual narrative into the lyrical descriptions. Continue reading »
(Todd Manning is the author of this review for Meta, the new third album by New York’s Car Bomb.)
I’ll admit it, I was disappointed with the direction Dillinger Escape Plan took starting with their third full-length Miss Machine. That’s not meant to disparage the band or their later work — it’s actually quite good and I’m sure they don’t need my approval anyway. But, the promise of sheer chaos was so strong with Under the Running Board and Calculating Infinity that I bought into the premise hook, line, and sinker. And honestly, some of the group’s more recent work had headed back to their original direction, which was a pretty awesome turn of events. But what I want to talk about is the third full-length coming from New York-based mad men Car Bomb.
Car Bomb have always embraced the chaos and confusion and have taken that original Dillinger-inspired blueprint to new and unforeseen depths of madness. Their latest release Meta sees them further explore their sound, continuing to add more dimensions and explore greater ranges of dynamics. These qualities are fleshed out well by the production work of Gojira’s Joe Duplantier, who also contributes vocals to the track “The Oppressor”. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn reviews the new album by the Swiss band Virvum.)
There’s been a lot of great Tech Death albums released in the last couple of years (and a lot of widdly, weedly, directionless dross too), so much so that it’s become far too easy to accidentally overlook or underplay something that later turns out to be a real gem in the constant rush of the new and the intoxicating pleasure of discovery.
As a matter of fact, I frequently find myself (re)discovering artists and releases whom I remember initially appreciating but ultimately never quite had the time or the impetus to really dig into the way I should.
Simply put, there’s just not enough time in the day/week/month/year to give everything the attention it deserves, and some things are always going to slip through the cracks.
And that’s not what I want to happen to Virvum, because their debut album Illuminance is one damn fine slab of scintillating progressive extremity. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn turns in a trio of reviews for three recent albums of quite different styles and genres, united by their country of origin.)
Well ladies and gentlemen, here we are again, another opportunity for me to fly my nationalistic colours (which don’t run, let me tell you that) and gab on about a triptych of recent (or recent-ish) releases from my beloved motherland. As is traditional, we’ll be starting off the column with a rousing rendition of “Rule Britannia”, so if you’d all please be upstanding…
All joking aside of course, most of you will know by now that I don’t really care that much for nationalist sentiment or blind patriotism, particularly when it comes to music. I like a band because I like their songs, not because we happen to have been born in the same country or geo-political sphere, and I have very little time or patience for the vagaries of scene politics or the type of person that thinks you have to support a band just because they come from the same place as you.
That being said, however, I do realise that such factors as geographical proximity and general exposure mean I’m much more likely to stumble across bands from the UK who are worth blogging about than someone living elsewhere on this big blue/green marble, so I feel a certain sense of responsibility to cover these bands when they pop up on my radar.
So here we go again, once more, into the breach! Continue reading »
(In this post DGR reviews the debut album by the Swiss band Frozen Gate.)
Occasionally some questions will arise as to how the NCS reviews process works. To be honest with you, the answer is fairly simple — we’re pretty freewheeling. We try our best to keep up with recent and relevant releases but often the authors of the site are pretty free to write about whatever strikes our fancy, which is why you’ll occasionally see reviews for albums that came out anywhere from the beginning of this year to two years ago on this page. If we think our readers will like it, we’ll write about it.
But, there are occasional quirks in this system that can often bring about discoveries: In this case it is that I am a giant manchild, who at his “wizened” age will still occasionally check out albums if the combination of cover art and album name strikes my fancy or in this case, amuses me.
Switzerland’s Frozen Gate released their debut album Behind The Dark Ice earlier this month and I came about it whilst scrolling through my various resources for recent releases. In this case the cover art for Behind The Dark Ice caught my eye — mostly for how stark it is. It can best be boiled down to just the band’s logo with a crest and some dark blue paint-brushing, evocative of a frigid land. It’s bare bones but it manages the job of matching its name sake of Behind The Dark Ice. I just had to have a look — while having no idea what sort of music Frozen Gate put out. Continue reading »