Album Reviews Archives - Page 399 of 557

OLD WITCH AND KEEPER: A SPLIT

Jul 142015

(Grant Skelton makes a quick pitch for the new split release by Old Witch and Keeper.)

There have been some amazing splits released of late. I’m still heavily imbibing the Altars Of Grief/Nachtterror Of Ash And Dying Light split that came out this past Friday. I recently discovered another split that should also be in your collection. Old Witch and Keeper will be releasing it this Wednesday, July 15, via Grimoire Cassette Cvlture/Cvlt Nation. The hideous, but completely appropriate, artwork was designed by Meghan MacRae at Cvlt Nation Design.

According to their Facebook page (here), Old Witch is the solo project of Stephen H. Heyerdahl. Heyerdahl could not have christened this project with a more fitting name. While listening to it, I felt certain that sweet Henrietta was going to erupt from my living room floor and swallow my soul. Good thing I always keep a boomstick within reach. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANTROPOFAGO — “ÆRA DEMENTIÆ”

Album Reviews, Premieres 1 Response »

Jul 132015

On August 14 Kaotoxin Records will release Æra Dementiæ, the second album by Antropofago from France. Last week we brought you the premiere of a new song named “Helter Skelter“, but today we’ve got for you a stream of the album in its entirety.

Antropofago score a rare hat trick on this new album. They’ve created a big shot of aural adrenaline, delivering the kind of vicious, jolting power that most death metal fans crave, but with the kind of intricate, inventive instrumental flair that will stimulate your higher faculties as well as the reptile part of your brain. And in addition to those achievements, they’ve made songs that are also heavy-grooved and very infectious. Continue reading »

PANOPTICON: “AUTUMN ETERNAL”

Album Reviews 9 Responses »

Jul 132015

Panopticon’s sixth album, Autumn Eternal, is finished. It will be a long wait until most people have a chance to experience it — it’s not scheduled for release until October 16, 2015. But for an album inspired by and named for Autumn, it’s only fitting that it come with the changing of the colors in the trees and the first bite of chill in the air. I can also assure you, as one among the fortunate few who have heard the album, that although the wait will be long, your patience will be richly rewarded.

All of Panopticon’s albums beginning with 2012’s Kentucky can be thought of as remembrances of time and place, functioning both as outlets for Austin Lunn’s creative impulses and also as records, or snap-shots, of particular experiences and the physical environments where they occurred. They have been inspired to a significant degree by the beauty of nature, and, as carefully constructed and richly layered as they are, you also get the sense when you hear them that they have been written and recorded with great passion.

In these ways, Autumn Eternal is like the last two albums that preceded it. It’s bursting with emotional intensity (it may be the most intense Panopticon album so far). It’s filled with powerful, sweeping melodies. It’s multi-layered, atmospheric, immersive, and memorable. But because Panopticon’s albums are such personal works, because they are snapshots of time and place in the life of their creator, there are also differences in the music as compared to those last two albums. People change, and Panopticon’s music continues to change as well. Continue reading »

HELLBASTARD: “FERAL”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Jul 132015

(Wil Cifer reviews the new album by the long-running British band Hellbastard.)

Hellbastard‘s new album features guest appearances from sensitive souls of Amebix. This proves to be more metal than the recent Amebix side-project, Tau Cross.

There is a slight Motörhead tinge to the vocals during opener “In Praise of Bast – Feral”, though they get really fucking cool around the chorus, when drenched in effects and set back into the mix. Otherwise, it gets off to a pretty thrashing start.

“Outsider of the Year” takes you back to that place in the ’80s where metal and punk met. The guitars and the drums fit tightly together to pack a dense punch into these riff. The lyrics are more punk and have a sharp sense of humor to them. What the vocals might lack in range they make up for in attitude. This album is well-produced and everything sits right where it needs to. This is right in line with some of the more on-the-fringe thrash that I listened to as a teenager. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: EL HIJO DE LA AURORA, MATUS, THE GRAND ASTORIA

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Jul 132015

(Comrade Aleks decided to try his hand at round-up duty today, with new music from three bands to throw your way.)

It is Summer, it is time to relax, and this brief overview is an exception to NCS rules, because today I’d like to approach some new releases from the world-wide psychedelic scene. If you’re open for new melodies in a retro style, if you see bright colors as music speaks to you, and you have few minutes, then take a look here…

Here are brief overviews of three new albums by El Hijo De La Aurora and Matus (both bands are from Peru) and the Russian project The Grand Astoria.

El Hijo De La Aurora – The Enigma of Evil

El Hijo De La Aurora (Son of the Dawn) is an experimental psychedelic doom project which was created by Joaquin Cuadra after his departure from another Peruvian band playing in a similar direction – Don Juan Matus. Joaquin and his companions discovered the enigmas of both mortal and spiritual worlds throughout two full-length albums, Lemuria (2008) and Wicca: Spells, Magic and Witchcraft Through Ages (2010). It took almost five years to continue their researches on a third full-length record under the name The Enigma of Evil, which was released on CD by Minotauro Records. Continue reading »

ORGAN DEALER: “VISCERAL INFECTION”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Jul 102015

(DGR reviews the new album by Organ Dealer from New Jersey.)

This one may wind up a little shorter than my usual screeds…maybe. But I promise you, when you hear it you’ll understand why.

There is a moment in the movie The Raid 2 in which a man has his face held against a grill until it is completely seared off — no doubt one of the more butal fight scenes in a movie with an amazing second half. That man’s face is often how I have begun to picture myself after the end of a listening session with New Jersey-based hyperviolent grind band Organ Dealer’s upcoming release Visceral Infection.

Organ Dealer are a new face on the scene, having to their name only a demo from 2014 (both songs on said demo appear on this new release) and their new upcoming EP. Yet theirs is a name that you should get prepared to hear a lot really, really soon. Continue reading »

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: HOWLS OF EBB — “THE MARROW VEIL”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Jul 092015

(Wil Cifer offers some first impressions of the new album by San Francisco’s Howls of Ebb.)

After reviewing the metal released thus far in 2015, I’ve come to the conclusion that today’s metal seems all too often to play it too safe, sticking to the safe confines of the genre, after blackening it up a bit. So a band like Howls of Ebb is welcomed relief, as they are not afraid to refrain from sounding like every other band who wants to be Incantation.

With only three songs, it’s hard to call this an album and not an EP, but my rule of thumb is anything longer than Reign In Blood is an album. Continue reading »

BARGHEST: “INTO WEEPING FIRMAMENT” — A REVIEW (AND BARGHEST TOUR NEWS)

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 5 Responses »

Jul 082015

Into Weeping Firmament, the new EP by Barghest from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is simply overpowering. From the obliterating drum assault in the opening seconds of the first song it seizes the listener’s throat in an iron grip and never lets go. All sorts of other metaphors come to mind — and I’ll probably use all of them — but what they have in common is the sense of being caught up by some force of nature that you’re far too small and frail to withstand — or to resist. But even though the music strikes with the force of a hurricane, there’s more to it than simply shock and awe — as I’ll explain after a digression.

We live in an age when black metal has become a diffuse genre of music. There are certainly fans and musicians who believe that black metal must be defined by the specific spiritual beliefs that inspire it and by the communion (or chaos) that it must help bring about: If it is not a genuine means of practicing Luciferian and Promethean ideals, then it does not merit the name — it is instead some kind of fraudulent posturing.

But many more people don’t embrace (or perhaps don’t understand) such rigid criteria. Instead, they define black metal by the presence of certain specific musical elements and/or by a certain emotional resonance that those ingredients produce. So many bands have borrowed those aspects of the sound (or some of them) and joined them together with other musical styles that “black metal” (or “blackened metal”), as I think most people understand the terms, has evolved into perhaps the most diverse and multi-faceted of all the genres of extreme metal. What accounts for this phenomenon? Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: WILD HUNT — “SCROLL AND URN”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Jul 082015

(Andy Synn reviews the new EP by Wild Hunt from the Bay Area of California.)

So I’ve really been enjoying discovering all these EPs lately. It’s not exactly been a conscious thing though, it just seems we’ve been enjoying a fantastic run of short, perfectly proportioned releases during the first half of this year.

Scroll and Urn is another one to add to the list, although we’re actually coming to it pretty late in the day, as it’s been available since the 17th of April from the band’s Bandcamp page.

If you visit the esteemed site known as Metal-Archives and search for the name Wild Hunt (and then click on the correct entry… handy tip: it’s the one without a “The” in front of it) you’ll see that the band are listed as Progressive Doom Metal/Post-Black Metal. However, this seems something of a misnomer to me.

While there’s certainly a strong progressive, and enviably creative, undercurrent to the music (as well as a gloaming shade of ominous, oppressive Doom) this is Black Metal to the core, with none of this “Post” nonsense to muddy the waters. Continue reading »

WRVTH: “WRVTH”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Jul 072015

(DGR reviews the new album by WRVTH [formerly known as Wrath of Vesuvius].)

It hasn’t been lost on me that over the years I’ve been lucky when it comes to seeing bands. While not in a preferred situation, my living in Sacramento has allowed me to see some really good shows, groups just starting out who have gone on to do some awesome things. By virtue of proximity to a couple of rather large cities and a populous region, I’ve been lucky enough to see some hyper-creative people roll through town multiple times. Even though I have often joked that Sacramento is some backwater cow-town pretending to be a city (you’d be forgiven, judging by all the highway billboards and signs in our airport for thinking that the most exciting thing to do in Sacramento is go elsewhere), there have been perks — such as being able to see WRVTH over the years as they’ve came visiting from their hometown of San Jose, California, on tour.

At the time, the band was going by the name Wrath Of Vesuvius and they were dealing in the sort of hyper-technical metalcore-and-deathcore hybrid that was gaining steam in the mid-to-late 2000’s. It had its moments for sure, as many talented musicians continually added different elements into a -core sound. In the case of Wrath Of Vesuivius the band neared a tech-death sphere multiple times. If you were to view a particular chunk of California in those days through a sort of prism, focused in on three corners — one being the Bay Area, one being Sacramento, and one being San Jose — you would’ve found quite the scene for that sort of hybrid, and eventually quite a few of those bands went full-blown technical death metal. Continue reading »

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