Album Reviews Archives - Page 389 of 557

OTARGOS: “XENO KAOS”

Oct 272015

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by the French band Otargos.)

Full disclosure: I’ve been a big fan of this band for a long time now (although, curiously, I don’t think I’d seen them live until this year’s edition of Incineration Festival), and have loyally followed them as they’ve transitioned, slowly but surely, from the more overt blackness of their early years, to the denser, more Death-tinged sound which they now wield.

Yet whilst their new album, Xeno Kaos, most definitely (even defiantly) continues this progression away from the realms of Black Metal, it also simultaneously takes both a step forwards and a step backwards from its predecessor, dropping the thrashier edge found on Apex Terror whilst making more room for a grimly oppressive Industrial undercurrent reminiscent of 2010’s No God, No Satan.

This clanking, industrialised soundscaping is nothing new to the band, obviously, but the way it’s deployed here alongside the steadily more Death Metal-leaning metallicisms that the band have made their stock-in-trade puts me strongly in mind of Norwegian extremists Zyklon (or perhaps their cousins in Myrkskog).

So, if you’re a fan of either of those bands (or simply a long-time Otargos fan curious as to where the band’s more deathly ambitions have taken them) then read on! Continue reading »

A DUAL REVIEW: MENDEL (“OBLIVION”) AND PAUL WARDINGHAM (“THE HUMAN AFFLICTION”)

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Oct 272015

(TheMadIsraeli returns to NCS with reviews of 2015 albums by two instrumental maestros — Mendel Bij De Leij and Paul Wardingham.)

Of the instrumental metal albums I’ve listened to this year, these two are definitely the top tier out of the bunch so far. There will be more multi-album reviews coming, in the spirit of clearing the way for the super big/important releases I’m also stoked about.

MENDEL: OBLIVION

Mendel is one of the most enjoyable instrumental metal listens you can partake of next to Jeff Loomis right now. Part Yngwie, part death metal, and all regality, Oblivion is an interesting listen that is so full of ideas it can also be rather exhausting — but in a good way. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LUNAR MANTRA — “GENESIS”

Album Reviews, Premieres 3 Responses »

Oct 262015

So close and yet so far away, mysterious and unknowable for most of our existence, the Moon has exerted as strong a pull on human imagination as it has on the tides. With its reflected light waxing and waning, it alternately casts the night into deepest darkness and illuminates it with a ghostly pallor, spawning tales of night terrors and visions of things beyond the material plane. And for millennia, it has been associated with madness (there is a reason why the words “lunatic” and “lunacy” are derived from the moon’s Latin name, luna).

The debut album, Genesis, by the Scottish black metal band Lunar Mantra brought all these thoughts to mind, and not just because of the band’s name. In many ways, the album captures the mystery and the powerful influence of our closest celestial neighbor on our imaginations — as well as its link with madness. Genesis is indeed “a nightside odyssey through the formless void”, as one press description has it — a disorienting and arcane experience that proves to be spellbinding. Continue reading »

GOATPSALM: “DOWNSTREAM”

Album Reviews 7 Responses »

Oct 252015

I am late in writing this review. I’ve had this album since mid-August and have enjoyed it over multiple listening sessions since then. It deserved more prompt attention, and it deserves even more words than I’m devoting to it now. On the other hand, the album isn’t projected for release until early next year, so I suppose I’m not too late.

The name of the album is Downstream, and it was created by a part-Russian, part-Ukrainian group named Goatpsalm, whose ranks include members of another very good, but very different, band — Sickrites. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (THE AMENTA)

Album Reviews, THE REARVIEW MIRROR 6 Responses »

Oct 252015

(This Sunday, DGR steps forward with our weekly look back at metal from yesteryear.)

I’ve been waffling a bit with the idea of contributing more often to the series of Rearview Mirror posts that we’ve been doing here at NCS. I genuinely love the idea of being able to deep-dive on a song at random, but I’ve also wanted to let other folks share their hidden gems out there without me vomiting my taste all over the site, especially as my own archive of ideas consists pretty much of bands I’ve already taken a healthy opportunity to write about on this lovely page.

However, there is one group that has been haunting me, that I’ve been thinking about a lot as of late, and that is Australia’s The Amenta. If you’ve been following NCS for a while, you’ll know that I’m a pretty unabashed fan of the band. Tim Pope gave me one of my favorite interviews ever, and the group’s 2013 release Flesh Is Heir ranks among my favorite discs — it is a noisy, harsh, and abrasive listen that seemed just slightly ahead of its time, especially as now it seems like more groups from Australia are breaking out into the limelight. Continue reading »

KOUROS: “CAUSA”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 5 Responses »

Oct 232015

I haven’t felt very well today, having managed to poison myself with alcohol at a job-related function last night. I doubted I would be able to write anything of my own for the site today. So fragile is my head and so unsettled is my stomach that I even doubted I would be able to stand listening to any metal. But for reasons I can’t really explain, I randomly decided to explore an EP named causa that a New Delhi band named Kouros had invited us to hear, via an e-mail that arrived yesterday. It proved to be a wise, if impulsive, decision.

causa was just released a week ago via Bandcamp, and it appears to be Kouros’ second release overall (though I could certainly be wrong about that). Further, it appears that Kouros is a solo project, the musical vision of a man who calls himself Nium, and it’s a multi-faceted vision that draws from multiple wellsprings of metal and rock. Continue reading »

ENSHINE: “SINGULARITY”

Album Reviews 8 Responses »

Oct 202015

(DGR reviews the new album by Enshine.)

Jari Lindholm is one of those musicians who surrounds himself with incredible talent, having been involved now in a handful of projects over the years and beginning to find himself having multiple releases within one year. Two of the projects that he is a part of are two-man melo-doom groups. Though they lie on different sides of a very finite spectrum, both are still playing a brand of ethereal doom that has always felt decidedly European, even as more groups in North America seem to be mastering it recently.

The first release of these two-man collaborations hit earlier this year, with Exgenesis releasing its first EP in the form of the soul-crushing bleakness of Aphotic Veil. Exgenesis sees Lindholm paired with musician Alejandro Lotero for a project that spans a pretty good chunk of the globe. Continue reading »

THE INFERNAL SEA: “THE GREAT MORTALITY”

Album Reviews 11 Responses »

Oct 192015

(Andy Synn reviews the second album by UK band The Infernal Sea.)

To say I’ve been champing at the bit to get hold of a copy of this album would be a severe understatement. To my mind The Infernal Sea are, without a doubt, one of the finest, filthiest, most utterly ferocious bands currently prowling this green and pleasant land of mine, having spent the last six years spreading their virulent strain of grim ‘n’ gritty Black Metal like a veritable Biblical plague.

However, as good as their previous releases (one full-length album, one EP, and two splits) were, it still always felt to me like the band’s full potential had yet to be realised, and multiple exposures to the band’s contagious brand of blackened intensity in the live arena only served to solidify this feeling.

Praise Satan then that the band’s second album, The Great Mortality, is exactly the sort of near-perfect realisation of their sound and vision that we’ve all been waiting for, fulfilling all the band’s nascent promise… and then some! Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: WOUDLOPER — SELF-TITLED EP

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Oct 082015

We rarely turn back in time for the metal releases we review at this site, instead spending most of our time focusing on what’s coming in the future. And when I recently began listening to Woudloper’s self-titled demo (which seems to have been originally self-released about a year ago, and then was distributed on cassette by the Dutch label Breathe Plastic Records earlier this year), I didn’t mean to write a review. I thought perhaps I would include a mention of it in one of our Shades of Black round-ups. But this small obsidian gem is so good that I thought it deserved a stand-alone feature.

The band is the solo project of a Dutch musician named Erik B., and this demo consists of two long songs, denominated only by number. If you’re interested in a genre description, the music crosses boundaries, fusing together elements of atmospheric black metal, sludgy doom, and post-metal. It’s staggeringly heavy and manages to be both mesmerizing and frightening. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: SCÁTH NA DÉITHE — “THE HORRORS OF OLD”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 5 Responses »

Oct 052015

This is the third of three brief reviews I’ve written today for new or forthcoming short releases. In this one the subject is The Horrors of Old — the debut EP released on October 1 by Scáth Na Déithe, a two-man band from Ireland (Cathal Hughes and Stephen Todd).

The EP consists of two long tracks (in the 10-11 minute range) and two short ones (in the range of 1-2 minutes). It does what all debut demos and EPs ideally should do: It displays in a relatively short span of time the capabilities and ideas of the band in a way that’s impressive, consistent, and coherent. And in this case, the EP does that in a way that furnishes a wholly immersive listening experience. Continue reading »

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