Album Reviews Archives - Page 374 of 557

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 10)

Apr 042016

(Our contributor from Norway, Gorger, is back with the tenth edition of his series recommending releases that we’ve managed to overlook. To find more of his discoveries, visit Gorger’s Metal.)

Greetings good folks.

My last installment contained 6 releases. This time I only present two. They are longer, and hopefully a bit more in depth.

Both consist of what I like to refer to as regional flavours.

The first one takes you through the fjords and up the mountainside to meet a debuting Norwegian act.

The second bulletin takes you to French Canada, and a band I’m sure many of you have encountered before. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): LATHSPELL, OREWOET, SEVENTH XUL, WILDERNESSKING

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 7 Responses »

Apr 032016

In my musical explorations over the last week I came across a lot of new black metal that I wanted to recommend. To make the rollout of the music a little more easily digestible, I divided the collection into two parts, with the music listed in alphabetical order by band name, continuing from Part 1 (here) into this second part. As usual for these posts, there are some significant stylistic differences in the sounds, despite the connections (either spiritual or otherwise) that all the music has to the ever-expanding genre of black metal.

LATHSPELL

Part 1 of this collection included new music by Havukruunu, and we return to Finland for this next song, which will appear on the forthcoming fifth album by Lathspell. Entitled Thorn Cold Void, it’s due for release later this month by Wolfspell Records and Patologian Laboratorio Productions. Though Lathspell have been in existence for almost two decades, this song is the first piece of their music that I’ve heard, so I can’t give you a comparison to their previous works. But just considering it as a stand-alone song, it’s powerful stuff. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): GJENDØD, HAVUKRUUNU, HEIR, INCLEMENCY

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Apr 032016

This is Part 1 of a collection of very good new music in the orbit of black metal that I encountered over the last week. Once again, I found a lot to like — so much that I decided to divide the collection into two parts — but I hope you’ll find time to at least sample the music from each band; only two of them have previously been covered at this site. I’ve arranged the music in alphabetical order by band name, continuing into Part 2 later today.

GJENDØD

Apart from the music in the two songs embedded below, the only thing I know about Gjendød is that the band is from Norway and that sometime “soon” the Polish label Hellthrasher Productions intends to release what appears to be the band’s first demo on CD.

The songs you can now stream are two of the four listed on the Bandcamp player for the demo — “Evig svart røyk” and “Menneskeavl”. If we could plug the energy of these songs into electrical grids, we could decommission vast numbers of power plants — though we wouldn’t do much to reduce global warming, because these tracks are hot as hell. Continue reading »

SYRINX: “BLACK SPRING”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Apr 012016

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Syrinx from Limoges, France.)

The start of every new year brings another opportunity for new musical discoveries. At least, that’s how I’ve always felt about things. In fact I think it was probably almost exactly twelve months ago (give or take) that I last said something to that effect. You know what they say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

Fittingly enough, today’s discovery comes courtesy of France’s own Syrinx, whose all-killer, no-filler new album, Black Spring, delivers a ten-thousand megaton blast of post-Gojira, post-Decapitated Death Metal, balancing punishing, piston-powered riffage and bunker-busting drum work with a subtle progressive flow and liquid-metal fluidity that helps make it stand out head and shoulders above the rest. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KRIGSGRAV — “WAVES OF DEGRADATION”

Album Reviews, Premieres 1 Response »

Mar 302016

I had not really explored Krigsgrav’s music until Panopticon’s Austin Lunn included The Carrion Fields on his 2014 year-end list at our site, praising it as “a fantastic release” with “the unique sound that American folk/Black metal has become known for, but with some Brave Murder Day thrown in there for good measure”. Now, almost two years on from that well-received third album, this Texas-based band have signed with Bindrune Recordings, which will soon be releasing their new album Waves of Degradation. In advance of its April 1 release date, we bring you a full stream of the new album.

Krigsgrav’s partnership with Bindrune is a natural one. The label has released excellent albums by such bands as Panopticon, Alda, and Falls of Rauros, and Waves of Degradation will undoubtedly appeal to fans of those bands. Though Krigsgrav’s early works embraced a raw, vicious form of orthodox black metal, they have now well and truly left those days behind. Although the band still amplify the intensity of their sound by integrating the vibration of tremolo chords, blast-beat flurries, and high, agonizing shrieks (along with arid roars), the strength of their music (and its emotional power) now lies in the somber yet sublime atmospheric quality of their folk-influenced melodies. Continue reading »

PHOBOCOSM: “BRINGER OF DROUGHT”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Mar 302016

With their 2014 debut album Deprived, Montréal’s Phobocosm demonstrated a dawning talent for generating a poisonous, pitch-black atmosphere of dread, pain, and imminent destruction. With their new album, Bringer of Doubt, they have honed that talent, creating music that if anything is even more thoroughly and oppressively saturated with darkness and doom, yet is also even more memorable.

As before, the band have created death metal that’s leavened with elements of doom and dissonant black metal, and the resulting music is unerringly and unceasingly bleak and predatory. The opening track, “Engulfing Dust”, exemplifies the new album’s more prominent use of horrifying doom. It’s a staggering funereal lament that’s cold, desolate, and crushing. The song begins and ends with the sound of wind, rain, and finally distant thunder, and the melody first heard in the slow, sad chords at the start becomes a paean to pain. Continue reading »

WORMED: “KRIGHSU”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Mar 292016

(DGR reviews the new album by Spain’s Wormed.)

If there is one overriding theme in a bunch of my reviews here at NCS, it has been a want to describe much of the death metal genre’s method of musical devastation on a cosmic scale. In lieu of the gore-splattered viscera that often seems perfect for describing the various collections of intestines that death metal often romps around in, I’ve found that planetary annihilation, destruction of universes, and universal phenomena have time and time again been perfect for drawing allegories when writing around the differing arsenals of blast beats and guitar-fire trench-runs that many death metal bands get up to.

I have been recently trying to change this up a bit. I know that constantly seeing the same descriptors over and over again can make it seem like authors have copy+paste notebooks next to them when writing reviews. But there is one band for whom I feel I must make an exception, and that is Spain’s sci-fi brutal death metal architects Wormed — because Wormed are death metal on a cosmic scale, and nothing would be more fitting as a descriptor of the gamma rays of a dying star destroying a nearby galaxy than an album by Wormed; that could be what has happened within even one of their songs.

Plus, up until 2013’s Exodromos, it’s not as if we could pretend this was an opportunity that would present itself frequently. But coming in hot three years later is Krighsu, Wormed’s late-March followup to Exodromos, and it promises a return to the maddening sci-fi machinations of a band who occupy their own realm of hammering death metal, with a helping of growls so low they could rumble the Earth. Continue reading »

NEW KEEPERS OF THE WATER TOWERS: “INFERNAL MACHINES”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Mar 292016

(Allen Griffin prepared this review of the new album by Sweden’s New Keepers of the Water Towers.)

Swedish quintet New Keepers of the Water Towers are set to unleash their latest opus Infernal Machines on April 1st. Occupying a territory which could vaguely be described as Psychedelic/Progressive Rock, the group’s sound is ultimately so much more and should not be passed over by Metal fans who don’t normally check out the aforementioned sub-genres.

Many reviews, especially since their last album The Calydonian Hunt (2011), go to great lengths to talk about New Keepers of the Water Towers’ Pink Floyd influence. And while that element of their sound is certainly present, it doesn’t truly acknowledge the group’s epic gestures of Doom. Without utilizing traditional Metal guitar tones, they nevertheless achieve moments of crushing enormity. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: HISSING — S/T

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Mar 252016

I’ve been meaning to write about the 2015 self-titled EP by Seattle’s Hissing for a long time, but now that it’s being re-issued in CD format by Jeff Wilson’s Disorder Recordings today, I’ve been given a second chance to make amends for my past failings — and the band have a couple of noteworthy tours beginning this week that I’d like to spread the word about as well (they’re playing in Seattle this very night along with Lycus, Un, and Eye of Nix).

As noted, Hissing are based here in Seattle, and this EP was their debut release. There’s not one moment of reassurance in its roughly 20-minute run-time, not even in the minute of silence that begins the “Outro” track, when you’re left to stew in your own juices before being surrounded by what sounds like some kind of ghastly industrial assembly line backed by the sound of altered strings. Continue reading »

MANTAR: “ODE TO THE FLAME”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Mar 252016

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Germany’s Mantar, coming next month from Nuclear Blast.)

When I say that Ode to the Flame, the second album by German blackened sludgemeisters Mantar, is one badass motherfucker, you’d best believe that I mean it.

Fuelled by rage and empowered by the divine spirit of “the riff”, practically every aspect of it – from its punishing, stone-cold grooves, snarling, punked-up hooks, and monstrously heavy guitar sound – is a huge step up from the band’s debut, with Messrs. Hanno (vocals/guitars) and Erinc (drums/vocals) upping their game on pretty much every level.

Bristling with barely restrained aggression, and gifted with a brash, belligerent swagger and a malicious streak a mile wide, it’s also the first album in a long, long time, to fill that twisted, Nachtmystium-shaped hole in my heart, though its tar-soaked and sludge-encrusted underbelly and downright surly demeanour mean that the final product offers up a much different experience than Judd and co’s self-loathing anthems. Continue reading »

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