Album Reviews Archives - Page 398 of 557

SHORT BUT SWEET: ACERO LETAL — “VELOZ INVENCIBLE / DURO METAL”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHORT BUT SWEET 5 Responses »

Jul 212015

I’m devoting almost all of my posts today to a series of five short releases I discovered since last week, and this is the second of those.

ACERO LETAL

Acero Letal (“lethal steel”) are from Chile, which seems to be a hotbed of speed metal and thrash — and I do mean hot. The band released a demo in 2008, and in February of this year the most excellent Witches Brew released a two-song single from the band on black vinyl, with a download available on Bandcamp. The two tracks on the single are “Veloz Invencible” and “Duro Metal“.

Fairly late in my metal life, I’ve discovered a lust for old-school speed metal — maybe because I wasn’t listening to it when it had its genesis in the ’80s — and these two songs feed that hunger quite nicely, while bringing in other elements of “classic heavy metal”. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: HUMAN BODIES — “DEMO MMXV”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Jul 212015

Today I’ve prepared brief reviews of five short releases that I discovered since the end of last week. All five of them are very strong, and all but one are available on Bandcamp. This is the first.

HUMAN BODIES

I first came across Boston’s Human Bodies in May of 2014 and foamed at the mouth (here) about their eviscerating 2013 demo and a subsequent single named Scapegoat. And then last October I foamed at the mouth some more about their No Life demo, which included “Scapegoat” (here). And now I’m about to slobber some more. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ORPHEUS OMEGA — “PARTUM VITA MORTEM”

Album Reviews, Premieres 6 Responses »

Jul 202015

(Today we bring you the premiere of a full stream of the new third album by Orpheus Omega, scheduled for release later this month by Kolony Records — preceded by this typically detailed review from our man DGR.)

Orpheus Omega are a young melodeath band from Melbourne, Australia. They’ve been around for seven years now and have managed to produce two albums, an EP — and one new disc coming out very soon. That album is the one you’re about to hear in its entirety, Partum Vita Mortem.

Until 2013, they operated under just the name Orpheus, but wound up adding the Omega to their name that year. They hail from the school of melodeath that places a heavy emphasis on keyboard work and guitar melody, the school that became incredibly popular with the explosion of bands like Soilwork, In Flames, and Dark Tranquillity. However, the band really came into their own with 2013’s Resillusion and showed that they could modernize that sound. They also proved that they would be one of those bands who seemed to improve astronomically with every album.

Over the past couple of years we, here at NCS seem to have had good fortune in finding groups like this, bands who are clearly students of a genre yet play like masters, who recognize the boundaries of what they are playing with yet still put out fantastic material with the tools they have. Aether Realm, Words Of Farewell, and Crepuscle spring to mind as more recent discoveries who, alongside Orpheus Omega, are proving to be the new blood of this keyboard-heavy branch of the melodeath genre. In the case of Orpheus Omega, Partum Vita Mortem is their most mature and well-developed album to date. Continue reading »

AGONYST: “THE BAD OLD DAYS”

Album Reviews 5 Responses »

Jul 202015

(Andy Synn reviews the new second album by Agonyst from Norwich in the UK.)

Here’s a quick disclaimer before I get on with this review. I actually know the Agonyst guys, although not particularly well. We don’t really talk often (or, in fact, ever), but we do have a number of friends in common, and have in fact played a few shows together over the years.

I say this because I wanted to try and head off any accusations of bias. Yes, I am definitely a fan of the band and their peculiar brand of off-kilter, psychosomatic Death Groove, but I approach this album with just as much trepidation as anyone else. If it had turned out to suck, then I would not have written about it.

Thus the cleverest among you may have deduced one thing already.

It does not suck. Continue reading »

AUSTIN WEBER’S BEST OF 2015 SO FAR: PRIME CUTS FROM THE UNDERGROUND OF THE UNDERGROUND (PART 3)

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

Jul 202015

(In this multi-part post that began last week, Austin Weber brings us his recommendations for some of the best albums released during the first half of the year. Part 1 is at this location and Part 2 is here.)

Ni are a French mathcore band whose madness you have to hear to understand, though to try to explain, they give off a demented Mr. Bungle vibe that’s paired with a hefty jazz influence and more mind-bending polyrhythms than you can possibly keep track of. Their new record, Les insurgés de Romilly, has been blowing my mind for the last week with its funky, headbang-inducing grooves and quirky, disorienting nature.

This record is an interesting exercise in combining highly technical, groove-oriented math-metal with prog and experimental inclinations. If death metal and other subgenres try to batter you with speed, then what ni do would be more akin to giving listeners a hit of acid and putting them in a vast, surreal labyrinth. Continue reading »

INFERA BRUO: A REVIEW OF “IN CONJURATION” AND THE PREMIERE OF “ASTROGENESIS”

Album Reviews, Premieres 7 Responses »

Jul 172015

I’ve been on a Bindrune Recordings roll this week, with a review of the new Panopticon album on Monday, a review of the new Alda album on Wednesday (with a song premiere), and now this review of the new album by Boston’s Infera Bruo — and a premiere of one of its stellar new songs. I’ve been living with these three albums for a while, and life has been good. If it’s not too much to hope for some justice in the world, it should be good for these bands and this label as well.

Infera Bruo’s new album In Conjuration is the band’s third full-length, following their 2011 self-titled debut and 2013’s Desolate Unknown. In the past, the band’s music has drawn favorable comparisons to that of Enslaved, and no doubt the new album’s progressive casting of black metal will again invoke remembrances of those masterful Norwegians. These new compositions are often complex and challenging in ways that should appeal to fans who appreciate avant-garde approaches to extreme metal. But the album is also a very dark and unsettling beast, with an affinity for tension-ratcheting intensity that rarely reaches the breaking point. Continue reading »

SARPENTRA: “SUPERNOVA”

Album Reviews 7 Responses »

Jul 172015

(Andy Synn reviews the debut album by Russia’s Sarpentra, which is out now.)

Hyperbole is a funny old thing. On the one hand it’s kind of fun to engage in, particularly if done so in a knowing, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, kind of manner. We love this music, so why not go all out? It’s an extreme genre, so let’s go wild!

But, on the other, when misused it definitely has a tendency to be more than a little misleading and to set up unreasonable expectations (something which I’ve been accused of myself only recently).

To wit, one of the reasons I elected to review Supernova was to try to counter some of the hype I’ve seen being thrown around, with words like “genre-redefining” and “revolutionary” being bandied about as if they were going out of style.

So I suppose what I really want to do with this review is to encourage you to take this album on its own merits, and not as if it’s the second coming of [Insert Famous Band Here]. Heck, if you really want to you can just scroll down to the bottom and listen yourselves, without taking any account of what I’ve written.

But for those of you who maybe want a little more context to inform your listening, or who simply enjoy reading articles about killer Death Metal albums… read on! Continue reading »

AUSTIN WEBER’S BEST OF 2015 SO FAR: PRIME CUTS FROM THE UNDERGROUND OF THE UNDERGROUND (PART 2)

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 8 Responses »

Jul 172015

(In this multi-part post, Austin Weber brings us his recommendations for some of the best albums released during the first half of the year. Part 1 is at this location.)

Lever Of Archimedes

Today we start off with Lever Of Archimedes, a death metal trio from Washington, D.C. Triptych Disentanglement is the band’s first release, and in just three songs and a a brief 13 total minutes the band proves themselves to be a technical tour de force in the vein of Archspire and Beneath The Massacre, while mixing in a Conducting From The Grave melodic feel and grit at times. Continue reading »

AUSTIN WEBER’S BEST OF 2015 SO FAR: PRIME CUTS FROM THE UNDERGROUND OF THE UNDERGROUND (PART 1)

Album Reviews, Listmania, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Jul 152015

(In this multi-part post, Austin Weber brings us his recommendations for some of the best albums released during the first half of the year.)

We are gathered here today, to become willing devotees to the aural alchemism presented below in various forms. While the words per band write-up may be sparse due to a lack of time, the music speaks volumes in terms of creativity; and in terms of literal volume as well!

I figured now would be a good time to post about a bunch of killer releases I’ve failed to find time to write about. And not just because I found them to be decent or somewhat enjoyable, but because these are some of the best of this year that you within our beloved metal community need to know about. They range across such genres as tech-meth, R&B-infused grindcore, Nu-core wave of heavy 2 the core metal, Classical punk-bop, Blackened post-folk, SludgEDM, Southern Acoustic DJENT, and Rollercoaster deathpolka (a curious after-writing search led me to find out that someone has a band named deathpolka, bitching!).

Expect several more installments of this 2015 “best of” feature coming soon. I hope. Maybe?

Okazaki Fragments

First on today’s list of recommendations is Abandoned, the headspinning debut by the Canadian death machine known as Okazaki Fragments. This Calgary-based group’s moniker, in a nutshell, can be boiled down to the growth process of new DNA. As an analogy for what their music has in store, it’s a damn fitting name for the unique music they’ve created. Continue reading »

ALDA: A PREMIERE OF “THE CLEARCUT” AND A REVIEW OF “PASSAGE”

Album Reviews, Premieres 13 Responses »

Jul 142015

More than four years have passed since Alda’s release of their last album Tahoma. For those (like me) who greatly admired that album, it has been difficult to be patient while waiting for something new. At last, Alda have completed a new album. The name is Passage, it will be released by the end of this month via Bindrune/Eihwaz Recordings, and it’s wonderful.

For those of you are as impatient as I’ve been, you can skip straight to the bottom of this post and listen to our premiere of the album’s first track, “The Clearcut“. For those whose patience hasn’t been completely exhausted, you can first read the following thoughts about the album as a whole — or perhaps listen and then read.

I suppose it has become prosaic to say that an album is a journey, but Passage really is one. The long songs flow into each other almost seamlessly, and although the individual tracks can be heard and appreciated on their own, moving through the entire album in a single sitting is to be caught up and carried away (and sometimes to be carried deep into your own mind, as the music fires your imagination). You get the sense that there are stories in these songs, though the vocals are sparse and often wordless, and the narrative is one that’s dramatic and powerful. Continue reading »

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