Album Reviews Archives - Page 385 of 557

MARTRIDEN: “COLD AND THE SILENCE”

Dec 032015

(Andy Synn reviews the first album by Martriden in almost six years, which unexpectedly appeared on Bandcamp earlier this week.)

So formerly Montana-based and now Denver-based Progressive Black Metallers Martriden decided to go the Krallice route with the release of their latest album, and drop it onto Bandcamp earlier this week with little to no fanfare preceding its appearance. Thankfully for all of you, I’m a huge (borderline obese) fan of this band, so the second I spotted the message about its release I dived on it as if it were a live grenade/puppy and have been listening to it almost non-stop ever since.

What I’ve found, however, is that, for whatever reason, this is actually a pretty hard album to review. For me, anyway. I’ve written, deleted, and rewritten so many paragraphs about each track and then scrapped them totally so many times now that the version you’re currently reading bears little to no resemblance to what I originally intended when I first set out to form my thoughts into (semi)coherent sentences. Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: “SONGS FROM THE NORTH I, II & III”

Album Reviews 16 Responses »

Nov 302015

(In the longest review we’ve ever published, DGR assesses the mammoth new three-disc album by Finland’s Swallow the Sun.)

We’ve had this disc for a bit. I know we’re late on this, but I hope to make it up you guys by essentially deep-diving and excavating this album, as there’s a ton going on with Songs From The North I, II & II that deserves to be highlighted.

I have become one with this album. It is inside me, and I am inside it. At this point, I consider myself the Jacques Cousteau of album reviewers — minus the whole being French, deep-sea diving, and talented part, but still. I believe the analogy holds on its own merits. I have stared into the abyss through the eyes of this album and asked if there was anything worth saving, and still my heart said, “No”.

Songs From The North is an album that a lot of folks have been approaching with equal measures of dread and excitement. A huge cause of this is obviously down to the fact that the up-front description of Songs From The North was essentially this: doom metal band from Finland decides to release a triple-album — as in, not one disc, or two discs, but three separate platters of music. Continue reading »

HATESPHERE: “NEW HELL”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Nov 302015

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Denmark’s HateSphere.)

Out of all the bands that came out of the post-Haunted neo-thrash movement, my two favorites — and I’d argue to a point the objective best — have been Carnal Forge and HateSphere. I was a rabid devotee of HateSphere’s first five albums, but then the majority of the band left and founding guitarist and song-writer Pepe Hansen was forced to find new blood. Their output has had varying results for me since then.

I loved the music of To The Nines but couldn’t stand the weak vocals of Jonathan Albrechtsen in place of the band’s original vocalist Jacob Bredahl, who was as feral as it got. I LOVED The Great Bludgeoning; it had riffs, it had aggression, it had frantic energy — and the new vocalist and still current vocalist Esben or “Esse” Hansen had that vomitus tone to his vocals that called back to Bredahl, and the result was that he fit the music quite a bit. I enjoyed SOME of the bands next record Murderlust, but I have to admit that a lot of it was really forgettable. The thing is, I still love this band, even if they aren’t exactly the same band I used to love, but the spirit is definitely still there.

So I guess the question is where does New Hell stand? Continue reading »

ANTLION: “THE PRESCIENT”

Album Reviews 9 Responses »

Nov 292015

The word “technical” is a frequently used word in the community of extreme metal. It seems to be used most often to describe the rendering of notes (or beats) at high speed and with impressive physical dexterity. But while those skills may be worth admiring for what they are, we all know that technical skill alone does not mean that the music it serves is worth applauding as a work of art. Even when that kind of flash-bang athleticism is employed creatively in songs that follow inventive, non-linear trajectories, it can still leave listeners cold. There is, after all, a lot of impressive mechanical frenzy in a washing machine with a busted counterweight, but your first impulse is to pull the plug as fast as possible.

However, when technical skill goes beyond even top-shelf levels of physical adroitness, when the musicians seem to have such an intuitive and deeply understood feel for their instruments, and when that kind of intimate mastery is joined with imagination, stylistic diversity, and a skill at songcraft that matches the performance techniques, then you get something really special. And that’s what Antlion have achieved with their debut album, The Prescient. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ENDLESS RECOVERY, VALROGH, FUCK-USHIMA, ONE TAIL, ONE HEAD, OLD SKIN

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

Nov 282015

This is kind of an odd Saturday. Here in the U.S., it’s the middle of a long holiday weekend, two days after Thanksgiving, a day after Black Friday, and two days before what snake oil peddlers have annointed “Cyber Monday”, when people get back to their high-speed internet connections at work and are encouraged to buy shit online that they don’t need, with money they don’t have. Hail Satan!

Anyway, I’m not sure if anyone will be visiting us today, but I’ve stitched together some (mostly) new music anyway, because instead of leaving my house to spend money yesterday I hunkered down and doused myself with a few hours of new metal. Much more satisfying and much less costly.

ENDLESS RECOVERY

I decided to start this round-up with a healthy heaping serving of high energy, beginning with a blast of speed metal from the Greek band Endless Recovery. The band’s new album (their second full-length) is named Revel In Demise, and it’s set for release by Witches Brew on December 24. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DEGIAL, KRATER, NACHTZEIT, NEKRASOV, FRONT

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 9 Responses »

Nov 272015

I guess it has become a cliche to feature black metal on Black Friday, even though the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other beyond a shared word. But we have no discounts to offer on the subscription to our site, no merch to sell at half off, and I’m overdue posting a Shades of Black feature anyway. So, black metal it shall be (mostly).

I’ve collected in this post streams of three new songs from forthcoming albums and two new EPs, plus my own garbled words.

DEGIAL

Okay, so Sweden’s Degial aren’t exactly a black metal band, but they’re necro to the core. The name of their new, second album is Savage Mutiny and it’s coming out via Sepulchral Voice Records on December 25 (in order to foul the holiday with their blasphemous stench, of course). The title track from the album was delivered unto our greedy ears yesterday, and you shall hear it next. Continue reading »

SECRETS OF THE MOON: “SUN”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Nov 272015

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Germany’s Secrets of the Moon.)

Change is a funny thing. Particularly in a genre both as Progressive and as Conservative as Metal can be. We so often crave the thrill of the new, whilst clinging to the comfort and security of the familiar. Sometimes simultaneously. And this isn’t just confined to Metal either. It’s something you can see across listeners of all different genres.

I am painting with something of a wide brush there, though, as Metal fans are a diverse lot, when all is said and done. Some of them love to watch bands grow and develop and change. Others prefer them to stay the same (as long as they keep the quality high). Some even prefer bands to practically regress back to what they consider the “Golden Age” of the genre. But I’d conjecture that most of us (at least here at NCS) tend to take things on a band-by-band basis. After all, some bands can get away with hitting that same sweet spot over and over again, when others quickly fall victim to the law of diminishing returns. And, similarly, some bands can change and transform into monsters (in a good way), while others simply grow too big for their boots.

So the important question here is… how do you handle change?… since the issue of whether you’re open, or averse, to change is going to have a big influence on how you receive this album.

Because, make no mistake about it, Sun showcases a wholly different Secrets of the Moon than the one you’re used to. Continue reading »

THANKS GIVING (AND MUSIC FROM EGO DEPTHS)

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Nov 262015

artwork by Monakh

I don’t know whether this is true in other countries, but here in the U.S. our holidays have become ritualized celebrations (each with their own distinctive personalities) that have very little to do with what they were originally intended to commemorate. And so it is with Thanksgiving. As for the holiday’s historical antecedents, The Font of All Human Knowledge tell us these things:

In the United States, the modern Thanksgiving holiday tradition is commonly, but not universally, traced to a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest….

Thanksgiving proclamations were made mostly by church leaders in New England up until 1682, and then by both state and church leaders until after the American Revolution. During the revolutionary period, political influences affected the issuance of Thanksgiving proclamations…. As President of the United States, George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789, “as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God”…. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): HOSTIUM, DAEMONIIS AD NOCTUM, HELION, LAMANTIDE, NADIMAC, THRASHFIRE

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Nov 252015

As I mentioned in my last post yesterday (here), I had more than the usual amount of time on Monday and Tuesday to explore new music and found a lot that I enjoyed. In addition to the six videos collected in that last post, I’ve selected recent songs from six more bands here. And at the risk of overwhelming you with metal, we’ll soon be following this round-up today with a second one assembled by Grant Skelton.

HOSTIUM

Hostium are rooted in Vancouver British Columbia. Their debut album The Bloodwine of Satan is projected for a vinyl release by Germany’s Iron Bonehead Productions in February of the new year, and a CD version will be released around the same time by NecroShrine Records. In recent days Iron Bonehead deployed a track named “Bloodwine Chalice” to Soundcloud. Continue reading »

SOLUTION .45: “NIGHTMARES IN THE WAKING STATE – PART I”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Nov 242015

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by Solution .45.)

I’d be rather curious to see a proverbial show of hands in the comments on the question of who still gives a shit about Christian Älvestam metal. The guy, despite having been regarded as one of the “it” vocalists of modern metal’s evolution, seems to have a loyal underground fanbase and not much more these days. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that his bands have all been a spin on the same sound in some fashion or another (including even his Unmoored-to-Scar-Symmetry transition if you look at Unmoored’s last album) and I could see or imagine that for some people it just got really old.

It’s only been recently that he, along with his cohorts in his various bands, most notably showed an effort to branch away from this with Miseration’s last album, which was a full-on death metal record with an oddly peculiar attack. Solution .45, though, with their debut For Aeons Past showed themselves to be a culmination of every single facet of the bands with Älvestam at the helm, and also the closest you could get to Scar Symmetry for sure. There were shades of them in the record, as well as Unmoored and Miseration, and overall the album was really solid, although I found myself taking more of a liking to what Scar Symmetry was doing after his departure. Continue reading »

Older Entries Newer Entries