AN NCS EP PREMIERE: CHARLENE BERETAH — “DEPRAVED / A VERY LONG WEEK”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 012016
 

charlene-beretah-depraved-a-very-long-week

 

Let’s have a show of hands:  How many of you are fans of Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket? Well, quite a lot of you, though I can’t say I’m surprised. Now, raise your hand if you remember the name that Private Gomer Pyle gave his M14 rifle, the one he ultimately used as the instrument of his own destruction. Not quite as many… but those of you who remembered “Charlene” got it right.

The band whose debut EP we’re premiering today remember it, too — the name they chose for themselves, Charlene Beretah, is a tribute to that movie. And their music turns out to be just as dark, depraved, and depressive. In fact, the EP’s name is Depraved / A Very Long Week, which combines the names of the two songs you’ll find there. Continue reading »

TERAMOBIL: “MAGNITUDE OF THOUGHTS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 012016
 

teramobil-art

 

(Here’s Austin Weber’s review of the new album by Montreal’s Teramobil.)

Some of you may have caught Teramobil’s initial 2013 release, Multispectral Supercontinuum, which we covered here at NCS in 2013. It got a lot of coverage elsewhere too, and for good reason. The line-up and the music were jaw-dropping.

The band is a power trio consisting of Dominic “Forest” Lapointe (Augury, First Fragment, ex-Beyond Creation) on six-string Bass, Mathieu Bérubé (Unhuman) on Guitar, and the always amazing Alexandre Dupras (Samskaras and Unhuman) on drums.

Out of nowhere, without any warning, the band dropped their second album yesterday called Magnitude of Thoughts. Even Luc Lemay gets in on the experience, playing some incredible stuff on second guitar on all of “Thanatonaut”. Continue reading »

SPAZZ: “SWEATIN’ II: DEPORTED LIVE GORILLA”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 012016
 

spazz-sweatin-ii

 

(Todd Manning reviews this re-mastered (or in some cases mastered for the first time) compilation of tracks by the now-defunct Spazz originally recorded from 1995-1996, plus a full live set from 1996.)

I always have drawn a rather false analogy when comparing music genres that goes something like, Metal is to Classical as Punk and Hardcore are to Jazz, trying to express the relative approaches of the musicians and their interactions as ensembles. More or less, Metal and Classical often seem to put a premium on a certain sort of precision, whereas Punk/Hardcore and Jazz, often at their best, rely on a tight sort of looseness, a sense that everything could fall apart at a moment’s notice, but yet the band manages to hold everything together, creating an enthralling dynamic tension.

All that being said, if most Hardcore were analogous to a Hard Bop quintet in full swing, then Powerviolence represented the most gonzo of Free Jazz ensembles, and Spazz was the king of the musical renegades. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 79: TERRA TENEBROSA

 Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT  5 Responses »
Nov 302016
 

Terra Tenebrosa art

 

(In this month’s edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy Synn reviews the discography of Terra Tenebrosa.)

Recommended for fans of: Blut Aus Nord, Leviathan, Ævangelist

Some bands are easy to categorise. Death Metal. Black Metal. Thrash. You can stick a band in one of these boxes and (generally) have a good impression of the sort of sounds you can expect to hear.

Of course, sometimes the category itself can be a bit nebulous. Metalcore. Nu-Metal. Progressive Metal. These aren’t quite as well-defined, and are frequently used as a catch-all term (often, but not always, with negative connotations) for bands that don’t fit properly in one of the “core” Metal genres (no pun intended).

And then there are bands like Terra Tenebrosa, who seem to willfully defy categorisation altogether.

“Avant-Garde Black Metal” seems to be the closest approximation that most people have settled on for their sound, but even this doesn’t quite capture it. There are elements and undercurrents of everything from gloomy Post-Metal and chaotic Hardcore to pulsing Industrial and droning Ambient music, all wrapped up in a grim shroud of morbid, blackened vibes and horror-movie atmospherics.

Whatever it is, though, it works. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SARKOM — “ANTI-COSMIC ART”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 302016
 

sarkom-anti-cosmic-art

 

On the 2nd day of December, Dark Essence Records will release the new fourth album, Anti-Cosmic Art, by the veteran group of Norwegian black metal barbarians known as Sarkom. Produced in a way that gives it the sonic power of a megaton detonation, it’s a compact, varied, and consistently addictive blast of fire and ice that will keep your head in a hammer lock from start to finish. You’ll see — because we’ve got a full stream of the album for you today.

At seven songs and 30 minutes, the album doesn’t overstay its welcome, but instead leaves the listener wanting more. The first time through it is like unwrapping one thorny, charred gift after another, each song a nasty surprise, and each track so well-written and so capably performed that it sticks in the head like a spike. Continue reading »

WITCHERY: “IN HIS INFERNAL MAJESTY’S SERVICE”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 282016
 

witchery-in-his-infernal-majestys-service

 

(Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Sweden’s long-running Witchery, which is out now via Century Media.)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock this year you’ll probably have heard something about the release of a new album by a bunch of head-banging, hard-riffing, Thrash Metal veterans who are currently undergoing a bit of a critical renaissance.

No, not Hetfield and co… we’re talking about motherfucking Witchery, bitches! Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: CONVULSING, SAURON, ÚIR, TRISTE TERRE, PANZERFAUST, XALPEN, ÆÐRA

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  13 Responses »
Nov 272016
 

convulsing-errata

 

I spent time yesterday pawing through a lot of recent releases and advance tracks by black metal bands. After some self-struggle, I picked a group of songs to feature in this post. And then late in the afternoon I got additional recommendations from various sources, and that tossed all my plans up into the air. When the dust settled, I revised my picks to include these:

CONVULSING

Convulsing was one of the recommendations that took me by surprise (thank you to starkweather and DaNasher). This is a one-man band from Sydney, Australia, whose new album Errata was released just yesterday. It caught the ears of certain listeners because the man behind Convulsing, Brendan Sloan, is also a member of Dumbsaint, who have a following. And word has been spreading. When you hear the album, I think you’ll be convinced that word will continue to spread, and damned fast and far, too. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: THE LOOM OF TIME, MOROSE, CHURCH OF DISGUST, DOOMENTOR

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  8 Responses »
Nov 262016
 

the-loom-of-time-nihilreich

 

I hope you’re having a good Saturday, and that this post will make it even better.

I know we’ve been throwing vast quantities of music your way lately as we try to clear the decks for the coming orgy of year-end-list features, but I still have a lot of metal that I feel the need to recommend. I’ll continue trying to keep abreast of advance tracks from forthcoming albums that sound promising, but what’s really burning a hole in my head are excellent full EPs, splits, and albums that have already been released but that we’ve neglected. The best way I know to deal with that problem is to compile posts like this one, abbreviating my own reviews and letting the music speak mainly for itself.

THE LOOM OF TIME

NihilReich is the eye-opening debut album of an Australian trio named The Loom of Time. It was released in March, though I didn’t listen to it until last month despite the significant praise it received from numerous reviewers. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): F.O.A.D — “BIRTH OF EXTINCTION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 252016
 

foad-cover

 

I’ll spell it out for you: Fuck Off and Die. I’m not talking about you, of course. But Sweden’s F.O.A.D might be. Their debut album Birth of Extinction is being released today by Mythrone Promotion and Defense Records, and we have a full stream of the album for your ears. It takes no prisoners.

Birth of Extinction may be the band’s full-length debut, but F.O.A.D (who are based in Västerås) are not newcomers. They trace their roots to a formation in 1986, although an extended hiatus followed their birth before their first demo Demo-Nical appeared in 2014. Birth of Extinction includes that demo as well as an even earlier song, “Morbid Truth”, in addition to the seven most recent album tracks. Continue reading »

BEST OF GERMAN (PART 2): NOCTE OBDUCTA, BETHLEHEM, ULTHA

 Album Reviews  30 Responses »
Nov 252016
 

flag-map-of-germany

 

(Andy Synn prepared this trio of reviews for new albums by three German bands.)

Synchronicity can be a strange thing indeed. Case in point, coming hot on the heels of my recent (and surprisingly well-received) column on “Black Metal” here we have a triple-header feature on three bands who all sit somewhere under the big black umbrella, but whose actual adherence to the term “Black Metal” varies pretty drastically.

Not only that, but they all just happen to be German in origin, which means I can collect all three groups under the “Best of German” banner which I first used (here) back in May, and pretend like this whole thing was part of some grand plan of mine, rather than a completely random sequence of events that just happens to have lined up in a way that appears to be thematically significant.

But I’ll take what I can get, because these three albums are all absolutely hervorragend… Continue reading »

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