Album Reviews Archives - Page 358 of 557

VADER: “IRON TIMES”

Sep 072016

(In this post DGR reviews the new EP by the Polish legends, Vader.)

It’s not too often that we review an EP ahead of a full disc, but Vader’s Iron Times is one that I’ve been privately intending to get around to, especially since I would hazard to say that for metal fans, Iron Times really is a “fun” listen — and I’ll explain what I mean by that.

Iron Times came out in Mid-August, which is about the time I got in my first listen, and with four tracks, two of which are covers, Iron Times is an unassuming release, one that is quietly understated with its album art — but the moment you press “play”, Iron Times tells a much faster, heavier story. However, it was Vader themselves revealing the album art to their new album The Empire, which is due out in early November, that triggered this review, especially since the two songs on Iron Times that are not the cover track or a brief Panzer X resurrection will be present on the full album. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: SINGULARITY — “VOID WALKER”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Sep 062016

(Andy Synn reviews the new EP by Arizona’s Singularity.)

By now you should be at least peripherally aware of Singularity, Arizona’s leading purveyors of Blackened Tech-Death, as we (and by “we”, I am mainly referring to regular contributor Austin Weber) have covered them several times before, most recently when premiering the band’s lyric video for “The Refusal”, the second track on their just-released new EP Void Walker.

Now I’ll admit up front that I was never quite as taken by the group’s debut (self-titled) album as some of our other writers and readers. It definitely had its fair share of stand-out moments, that’s for sure, but the band’s slightly scatterbrained, “kitchen-sink” approach to songwriting often left a fair bit to be desired in my opinion. And the less said about the perplexingly flat and affectless clean vocals the better…

Still, although the quartet didn’t quite manage to sustain the highest level of quality (in my opinion anyway) for the entire 51:30 run-time of their debut, the more restrictive confines of the EP format seem to have put the spurs to their creative juices, as (mixed metaphors aside) Void Walker is by some margin the best thing they’ve put their name to. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: OV SHADOWS AND SHRINE OF INSANABILIS

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Sep 052016

In this post I’m combining reviews of two short releases that were recommended by friends whose names may be familiar to long-time readers of our site — the first by .jh (Obitus) and the second by eiterorm. I owe them thanks, because both of these releases are excellent, and they also complement each other very well.

OV SHADOWS

Between 2008 and 2014 the Swedish band Waning released two albums and four shorter works, including a contribution to the Elemental Nightmares series of splits in 2014 that we wrote about incessantly. The song on that 2014 split turns out to be the last of Waning’s output, because at the start of this month they announced that the band had ended. However, members of Waning (one of whom is also in the aforementioned Obitus) and Black Drop Effect have formed a new group named Ov Shadows, and they have recently released a three-track EP called Monologues. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LLUVIA, JASSA, ENDE, VOMIT OF DOOM, JORDABLOD, HIRSI

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Sep 042016

I’ve been messing with this site for almost 7 years and I continue to be astonished by how much good metal from all over the world appears on a weekly basis. And so a lot of new music awaits you in this round-up of metal in a blackened vein, but there could have been more. In fact, I forced myself to separate new music from five other bands and assemble those tracks in another one of these posts, though I can’t be sure I’ll finish it before being diverted by other things.

I’m starting off with tracks from two new releases that are headed our way from the Fallen Empire label, and then branching off into other directions.

LLUVIA

We haven’t given enough attention to Lluvia (a one-man project from León, Mexico), even though the band’s last album Eternidad Solemne was celebrated in our friend Ben Smasher’s list of 2015’s best albums (and he’s not the only writer around the web who embraced the album last year). We have another opportunity to do better, because Lluvia has already completed a new album, the name of which is Enigma. Continue reading »

ALLEGAEON: “PROPONENT FOR SENTIENCE”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Sep 022016

(Here we have Andy Synn’s review of the much-anticipated new album by Colorado’s Allegaeon.)

So I’ve already seen a few reviews for this album eking their way out onto the interweb, several of which have gone down the desperate, obsequious route of “OMG guys! This is the best album ever! It’s perfect! Allegaeon are the future of metal! Please pay attention me!”

And don’t get me wrong, this is definitely a great album, and I’ve been a big fan of the Colorado quintet myself for quite some time now, it’s just that I fail to see the value in such shameless fawning and bootlicking. Do these people really think there’s some sort of value in blowing smoke up a band’s ass like this? When everything is written about IN BLOCK CAPITALS HYPERBOLE!!! and when every album is given a 10/10 rating… what’s the damn point?

Heck, as much as it must be nice to be praised for your work, the majority of the bands I’ve dealt with and spoken to over the years have told me that they’d rather read one well-thought-out review that offered a balance of creative compliments and constructive criticism than ten sprawling screeds written by people who either clearly have their own agenda to promote, or who are simply unable to write something that isn’t just gushingly saccharine and sycophantic.

Anyway, now that I’ve got that little rant out of my system we can get down to the business of reviewing (and praising) Proponent for Sentience, Allegaeon’s fourth full-length album, and their first with new vocalist Riley McShane. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 76: APATHY NOIR

Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT 3 Responses »

Aug 312016

Viktor Jonas // Vidar Wetterhall

(For the August edition of The Synn Report, Andy compiles reviews of all the releases by Sweden’s Apathy Noir, including the band’s 2016 album Across Dark Waters.)

Recommended for fans of: Opeth, In Mourning, October Tide

By my current reckoning I’ve got at least another two years’ worth of entries for The Synn Report lined up, and I don’t doubt that I’ll end up discovering even more bands worthy of inclusion during that period, so we’re in no danger of running out of potential candidates just yet. Hell, I’d hazard that there’s probably several other bands in my current collection who’ll be eligible by that time as well. So there’s no need to worry. This particular column won’t be ending any time soon.

For today’s entry we’re off to Sweden to touch base with Prog-Death duo Apathy Noir (formerly Apathy), the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Viktor Jonas, who have so far produced one EP and three stand-alone albums, the most recent of which, Across Dark Waters, was released in January of this year.

Now, to address the elephant in the room, I’ll acknowledge that the solemn Swedes owe a very heavy debt to early Opeth – particularly around the My Arms, Your Hearse period. But I’m confident you’ll find that there’s more to them than just that, particularly when they delve into the doomier, gloomier side of their repertoire.

Still, with Akerfeldt and co. treading ever further down the path of pure retro-proggery, there’s something of a vacuum out there right now, and Apathy Noir seem to be doing their damnedest to fill it! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: WORMHOLE — “SYMBIOTIC CORPSE POSSESSION”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Aug 312016

Beginning last fall, a band named Wormhole began releasing singles — first a track called “Existence Gap” and then early this year another song called “Nurtured In A Poisoned Womb”. These songs caught the attention of Lacerated Enemy Records, which is announcing today that they have signed Wormhole for the release of the band’s debut album Genesis. To celebrate this unholy event, we have partnered with Lacerated Enemy to bring you another new Wormhole song: “Symbiotic Corpse Possession“.

For those new to Wormhole, it’s the creation of a Baltimore duo, Sanil and Sanjay Kumar, with fearsome vocals by Duncan Bentley of South Africa’s Vulvodynia and Calum Forrest of Scotland’s Operation Cunt Destroyer and Engorging The Autopsy. Lacerated Enemy is recommending the new album for fans of Defeated Sanity, Aborted, Coprocephalic, Visceral Disgorge, and Abominable Putridity (among other slaughterers).

For those who may be unfamiliar with those bands, or with Wormhole, we have some introductory words: Continue reading »

BLACK METAL (PART 4): A COLLECTION CURATED BY NEILL JAMESON (KRIEG)

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Aug 302016

(We’re happy to report that Neill Jameson (Krieg) has returned to his series on black metal from years long past, adding a fourth part to the first three (which are collected behind this link). And he still hasn’t exhausted the subject, so if you continue to support this project as you already have, maybe we can convince him to keep going with it.)

I’ve decided to come back to the idea of black metal records and bands that flew under the radar or were well known during their time but have gotten a bit of dust on them over the years as people go for bands in witch hats or whatever the fuck they’re using now. It’s probably something I could do a dozen pieces on, honestly, just by listening to shitty tapes of the radio show I did in the ’90s/early ’00s. I guess it all depends on who gets sick of it first; you, the fine folks at NCS, or me.

My money is on one of the first two. Continue reading »

KHALDERA: “ALTERATION”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Aug 302016

(Andy Synn reviews the new EP by the Swiss band Khaldera.)

It was just over two years ago when I stumbled across Relief, the debut EP by Swiss instrumentalists Khaldera, and was immediately captivated by its distinctive blend of meditative calm and perfectly proportioned power. It quickly became one of my “go-to” EPs, and has remained in regular listening rotation for me ever since.

As you might imagine I was thrilled when, earlier this year, I discovered that the band were hard at work on the follow-up, to be titled Alteration, and seeing as how said follow-up was finally released on Bandcamp last Friday I felt compelled to at least write a few words about it, in the hope of introducing some fresh ears to the group’s signature brand of what I have chosen to call “Progressive Mood Metal”. Continue reading »

LESBIAN: “HALLUCINOGENESIS”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Aug 292016

(Wil Cifer reviews the new album by Seattle’s Lesbian, which is out now on the Translation Loss label and features striking cover art by Dan Seagrave.)

Before reviewing this album I went back and listened to Lesbian’s album Stratospheria Cubensis for a little perspective. Six years ago when that album came out, they were still pretty committed to not neatly fitting within any sub-genre of metal, and now they have continued to defy those boundaries even more.

Former members of The Accüsed formed this band back in 2007 and have now evolved their brand of proggy death metal into something even more darkly bizarre. Their new album finds the vocals becoming even more varied, blending sung vocals and growls. This is done in a very tasteful way that might win over some of you who think this approach is dated. In some ways it makes me think of what might have happened if Acid Bath had collided with Cynic. Continue reading »

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