AN NCS FULL ALBUM PREMIERE: CORBEAUX — “HIT THE HEAD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 012014
 

 

Corbeaux are a French quartet consisting of two guitarists, a bass player, a drummer — and (almost) no vocalist. Their debut album Hit the Head is being released today, and we’re bringing you a full stream of the album’s six songs.

It might be enough to say that if you’re a fan of bands such as Russian Circles, Pelican, and If These Trees Could Talk, you will enjoy this album. But it deserves more than drive-by name-dropping. Especially for a debut album, Hit the Head is a dynamic and engrossing experience.

Both within each song and through the album as a whole, the music ebbs and flows, with changes of pace, volume, and mood that will keep you involved and interested. Anchored by distorted, grinding bass notes and precise but ever-changing drum rhythms and creative fills, the songs spin out a wide array of absorbing dialogues between the dual guitars. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: MONTE PENUMBRA AND HALF VISIBLE PRESENCE (A SPLIT)

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Nov 302014
 

 

Back in August I was halted in my tracks by the very cool cover art for a then-forthcoming split release by Portugal’s Monte Penumbra and Half Visible Presence from The Netherlands. Both bands include members of the most excellent Israthoum (W.uR in Monte Penumbra and Arvath going solo in Half Visible Presence). The cover art above is actually the artwork for the Half Visible Presence side of the split — you’ll see the complementary art for Monte Penumbra’s side after the jump.

HALF VISIBLE PRESENCE

“Downwards Deathmarch” is the name of the Half Visible Presence track, and it could hardly be better named. Announced by the sound of a funeral bell against the backdrop of a cold, desolate wind, the song is anchored by doleful, groaning, repeating riffs and slow drumbeats. It’s a deep pit of misery, corroded with distortion and its melody sodden with tears. Continue reading »

SHROUD OF DESPONDENCY: “DEFECTIVE OVERPASS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 292014
 

 

I’ve been swarmed by new short releases that I want to write about. I had a list of five that I’ve been listening to this week, from which I wanted to pick one for this Saturday post. And then the new Shroud of Despondency EP de-railed those plans. I only meant to give it a minute or two this morning, just to get a sense of what was going on, and, well, here we are.

For those unfamiliar with the project, it’s the brainchild of musician Rory Heikkila, originally from Upper Michigan and now a resident of Wisconsin. Prior to this new EP, the last studio release was a double-album from earlier this year entitled Tied To A Dying Animal, which featured a mix of metal and acoustic songs. This new EP does, too.

The EP also marks the beginning of the end of the project. It’s a way-station on the road to the band’s final album, the recording of which is nearing completion, before Heikkila turns his attention elsewhere (to folk music, it appears). Continue reading »

UNFATHOMED OF ABYSS: “ARISEN UPON OBLIVION”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 262014
 

 

(We welcome Wil Cifer to NCS with this review of the debut album by Unfathomed of Abyss of San Antonio, Texas.)

Like everything else in Texas, Kevin Price thinks big, so he employed Kevin Talley of Dying Fetus / Daath fame to provide the drums. Price forsakes the organic approach taken by the flux of American Black metal bands to weave his own path. This path is filled with discordant geometry and angular atmosphere.

Opening with the 14-minute, piano-inflected “To Unequal the Balance of the Cosmos”, the album has an oddly uncertain beginning. While Kevin Talley is certainly not shabby as a drummer, he is not a black metal drummer and a drummer more versed in the genre would know where to throw in the appropriate blast beats to create the desired sound. Nevertheless, Talley does more than dial it in, adding a few creative accents of his own. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LORD IMPALER — “FINAL GATES” (AND A REVIEW OF “THE SERPENT SEAL”)

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Nov 262014
 

 

This year the Greek melodic black metal band Lord Impaler are celebrating their 16th year of life. In that long stretch of time they’ve released four demos (the first one in 1999), two split releases, a full-length album, and an EP. I’ve previously reviewed both the album (2011’s Admire the Cosmos Black) and the EP (2013’s Babylon Whore) — both of which are very impressive — but I’ve never heard any of the earlier demo recordings. Now all of us are about to get a taste of them in new form.

On December 7 Lord Impaler will release a special anniversary EP entitled The Serpent Seal – Το Αρχέγονο Σκότοσ Επιςτρέφει, which includes re-recorded versions of four songs from their first three demos, and today we’re premiering one of those tracks: “Final Gates”. Continue reading »

PRIMORDIAL: “WHERE GREATER MEN HAVE FALLEN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  7 Responses »
Nov 262014
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Ireland’s Primordial, with a new video from the band at the end.)

If the world were a fairer place, then I have no doubt that Primordial would be one of the biggest metal acts in the world by now. If the world rewarded raw passion and creativity the way it should, they’d be playing arenas and selling albums by the bucket-load, bringing their majestic brand of misery and majesty to all corners of the globe.

But the world isn’t fair. It seems most metalheads prefer to regress towards the lowest-common-denominator wherever possible, and that most popular music fans prefer things served up to them in lightweight, easily digestible chunks.

And that’s just the way things are. Sex sells, and so does simplicity. But it’s not really adding anything real, or particularly meaningful, to the world, is it? It’s been said many times that “pop will eat itself”. Well pop has eaten itself so many times now that all we’re left with is an endless cycle of eat-defecate-eat-regurgitate that’s sapped whatever little value from the music that it originally had.

We continue to consume, unaware that we’re starving ourselves to death.

It’s why I’m thankful for bands like Primordial. Bands who write and perform not for fame and fortune, and not to please some imagined audience, but for themselves, for the message, for the sheer cathartic joy of creation. Continue reading »

BARING TEETH: “GHOST CHORUS AMONG OLD RUINS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 252014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by Baring Teeth.)

The time has finally come for renowned quirky Texas death metallers Baring Teeth to show the world another plane of terrifying sounds and squalor. As if their first album, 2011’s Atrophy, in all its demented brilliance, was not enough of a jaw-dropping testament to their skill and uniqueness, they set their aims at a higher and different place on Ghost Chorus Among Old Ruins, giving us is a wide range of dynamics within each song — like a massive fight for control between frenetic, entrancing splinters and the colossal depths of quicksand, whose power ultimately derives from its slow, suffering burn.

Not only have they moved further from the realms of their Obscura-influenced debut, they’ve managed to expand their sound. It would have been easy and standard for a metal band like this one to keep the same blazing tempo and stylistic formula the second time around. Yet this time Baring Teeth offer more cesspools and sinkholes to drop into, sucking up more of the music like a slow-draining black hole, while also offering full-scale onslaught the likes of which will make your face melt just a bit too much to recover from in one sitting. Continue reading »

GOATWHORE: “CONSTRICTING RAGE OF THE MERCILESS”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Nov 242014
 

 

(DGR provides this review of the latest album by NOLA’s Goatwhore.)

Stupid late, and we know it, but as the end of the year approaches one of our worst habits is to panic  — or more correctly, I panic, because most of the guys on the site are pretty relaxed — about the massive number of albums that came out during the year that we didn’t get around to reviewing. Not only that, but there’s always two or three un-reviewed albums where it feels right to provide a forum for our users to discuss the disc alongside our own feelings on the album. Goatwhore’s Constricting Rage Of The Merciless is one such disc.

It was an album that, as far as I know, was suddenly just “Out”, and the only review we were able to stammer out for it at the time was one of Andy’s haiku reviews. While those are great and a fun exercise, and I do recognize the difficulty in trying to hammer a disc down to just three lines where I prefer to go the opposite route and provide massive walls of text, sometimes there’s an album in there that I generally regret not being able to give the full “review tome” treatment. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: VYRJU — “BLACK”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 232014
 

 

Vyrju began as the one-man project of Norwegian musician Jan F. Lindsø, but Vyrju’s debut EP Black also features session drums and clean vocals by Tim Yatras (Germ, Austere, ex-Nazxul, ex-Woods of Desolation). I’m a fan of Tim Yatras, and it was his participation in the recording that originally attracted me to it — well, that and the three big skulls on the EP’s cover, of course.

In a word, Black is captivating. The melodies in each of the four songs, with the exception of the short instrumental piece “Gone”, have a sombre and even depressive air, but they’re memorable and often beautiful in their own grim, ravaged way.  Continue reading »

KUNSTZONE: “ESCHATON DISCIPLINE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Nov 212014
 

 

(DGR reviews the debut EP by Kunstzone.)

There are a couple of names that I expect to see whenever an industrial metal project slides across ye old NCS promo desk. If it comes from one of those names, then I immediately start looking for the other batch — because if the name Alex Rise seems familiar to you and you’ve been following NCS then you know of his Tyrant Of Death project, and there’s a circle of musicians around him that seem determined to crossbreed into as many different projects as there are available combinations, most of which tend to be heavy on the electronic noise and programmed drums.

One of the more commonly observed names is an enigmatic entity named Candy — who has gone to tremendous lengths to hide its identity — responsible partly for President Streetwalker (which to this day remains the earliest I have ever gotten in on the ground floor for a band), the noisy as all hell Khaozone, and a myriad of other works including contributions to T.o.D vocalist Lucem Fero (Omar)’s own solo releases. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries