SHADES OF BLACK: JØTNARR, LVTHN, NINKHARSAG

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Oct 162014
 

I’m still more than 2,500 miles from home as a result of the old fucking day job, with precious little time to call my own, but I did take some breaks last night and early this morning, just long enough too explore three short releases that I’ve been meaning to check out. All of them are good, all of them are on Bandcamp, and all of them are either wholly or partly in the realms of black metal.

JØTNARR

I can’t remember which of my Facebook friends linked to this two-song EP, but whoever you are, thank you.

Jøtnarr are a three-man group from Colchester, England, and the title of that two-song EP, which is their most recent release (from December 2013), is Divide the Growth and Stone. Last month they were featured as “Band of the Day” at Terrorizer (here), along with an interview by Kez Whelan, and that may have been how my FB friend stumbled upon them. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: LESS THAN THREE — “THE BLACK BOX”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 152014
 

 

I learned about Finland’s Less Than Three through an e-mail from my old web friend fireangel (Night Elves), who for many years has made it her mission to focus on and spread the word about Finnish music.

The band started as a bedroom project of one Jesse Soiletsalo (ex-Medicated) in 2010, but in time he recruited quite an impressive line-up of allies to record the music he had composed: drummer Samuli Mikkonen (Profane Omen), vocalist Tommy Tuovinen (MyGrain), bass-player Pyry Hanski (ex-Before the Dawn, Mörbid Vomit), and second guitarist Ari-Pekka Repo (ex-Murdershock).

They recorded a self-titled EP and released it in March 2013, and this month they’ve released a second one, entitled The Black Box, with vicious cover art by Jussi Salolainen — or at least they’ve released it for listening. Announcements about a physical or digital release are yet to come. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: NUMENOREAN — DEMO 2014

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Oct 142014
 

 

We’ve thrown an unusually large number of recommended songs, videos, and releases your way today, but we’re still not finished. In this post you’ll find a review and a music stream of an EP I recently discovered that made quite a strong impression. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

NUMENOREAN

Numenorean from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, began as a two-man project in late 2011, with Byron Lemley recording and writing all the songs and Brandon Lemley providing the vocals. With additional vocal assistance from Aidan Crossley on one song, the band released a two-song demo in June 2014 totaling almost 20 minutes of music, and I listened to it yesterday.

And why did I listen to it? Because an e-mail from the band used references to Agalloch, old Alcest, and Falls of Rauros to describe the style of their music. I reacted to those references much like Pavlov’s dog at the bell: I started salivating. And then I listened to the first of the two tracks, “Let me In”. Continue reading »

METAL NOT PREVIOUSLY FEATURED ON NCS — PART 3

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  12 Responses »
Oct 142014
 

 

(Our Norwegian guest contributor Gorger, whose own blog is here, returns to NCS with the third and final Part of an entertaining post in which he recommends music we’ve overlooked — with a couple of conclusions at the end.)

 

Welcome to my last installation of stuff I’ve enjoyed these last months that has not been covered on NCS. The previous posts are here:

Part I
Part II

 

ENDZEIT: YEARS OF HUNGER

The difference between demos and self-released EPs can be rather minimal. Endzeit defines this as an EP, and the music is mature enough by all means to justify this. Negativity is about as popular here on NCS as clean, high-pitched singing performed by castrated power vocalists. Nevertheless, I have to address just this one negative aspect: Soundwise, there’s a somewhat unfinished feel. The sound is slightly flat and tame, whilst this music feels as if designed for a bombastic sound with a violent punch. The sound is by no means completely lifeless, though.

Endzeit is from Finland and was initially conceived as a one-man band by guitarist Polaris in 2012. This original intention was, however, quickly discarded as Black (vocals and guitar), Samuli (drums), and Pyry (bass) came along. The EP was written the same year and contains 22 minutes divided over five tracks. The guys have come up with a lyrical concept about a doomed, future-less world where decay has gone too far to be reversed. The inspiration is the city of Detroit, where large blocks/precincts are characterized by urban decay and vacancy. Condemned buildings allegedly serve as rat’s nests for criminals. Continue reading »

BLOODSHOT DAWN: “DEMONS”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Oct 132014
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the eagerly awaited second album by Bloodshot Dawn.)

I’ve been anticipating this ever since their debut came out. Bloodshot Dawn’s debut self-titled SAVED melodic death metal for me. It seemed that the only thing you could turn to for truly good melodic death metal was the doom-flavored Daylight Dies/In Mourning stuff. That stuff is excellent, and is one of my favorite musical developments in metal, but there hasn’t really been a champion for fast, aggressive, and riffy melodic death metal to prove it’s not an irrelevant copy-cat circle jerk. Bloodshot Dawn is now that champion.

Of course, I was apprehensive about whether Demons would be able to live up to its predecessor. The self-titled is so well-written and the perfect 50/50 split between melodic death metal and straight death metal that the balance the band established seemed like it would be a very delicate thing to maintain. With their second album, I have to say I think this is my first legit album of the year candidate, and it’s looking likely that it will be my album of the year in a few months time. Continue reading »

CREPUSCLE: “DRACONIAN WINTER”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 102014
 

 

(DGR reviews the 2014 debut album by Crepuscle from Redwood City, California.)

There are styles of heavy metal that I think, through no lack of trying on America’s part, are always going to be distinctly European. Folk metal and its various offshoots, alongside the hybrid genres of pagan melo-death (I’m still not sure that means anything but have seen numerous tours under that banner) and the sort of symphonic battle hymns that the combinations of the aforementioned genres, are all styles of music that European bands, and particularly the usual Scandinavian suspects, seem to have on lock down.

There have been some valiant attempts in the U.S., of course, as firing a shotgun into a wall is bound to hit something, and there have been a ton of bands over the years who have been inspired by groups such as Wintersun, Ensiferum, the viking metal explosion (itself a thorny briar patch of bands not easily defined), and their folksier brethren — but those bands have usually suffered from one of two problems: an inability to find a crowd here in the States and therefore no staying power, or a tendency to display a light shade of mimicry.

It has usually been all too clear that the musicians in these bands were massive fans of their influences, but they were never able to get out of their shadow creatively, leaving them feeling like the B-team to a better product that sadly, rarely seems to tour over here. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: MANES — “BE ALL END ALL”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  4 Responses »
Oct 102014
 

 

Prepare yourselves for a big departure from our normal fare as we present a full-album stream of Be All End All, the new release by Norway’s Manes.

You would be hard-pressed to find a band who have led as many diverse musical lives at Manes. At the time of the band’s genesis in about 1992, and through the release of their 1999 debut album Under Ein Blodraud Maane, they were a black metal band. And then there was a hiatus — until the second album Vilosophe was released in 2003. It sounded nothing like what the band had been creating prior to the break, and it defied categorization. More releases followed, including a third album (2007’s How the World Came To An End), and then another hiatus followed.

Now the band have, in effect, begun a third life with Be All End All, which will soon be released by Debemur Morti. This follows a two-song single named Vntrve released at the end of the summer (reviewed here), and it’s the first full-length from the band in seven years. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: THE DEATH OF DEARTH, PART II, INSTALLMENT 5

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Oct 092014
 

(In this 5th installment of a multi-part piece, Austin Weber continues rolling out recommended releases from his latest exploratory  forays through the underground. The first installment is here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here.)

KATAPLEXIS

Let’s start today’s edition with a bang, the kind of loud and ear-shattering ruckus you might associate with a mortar shelling or rapid machine-gun fire flying out of an unnecessarily huge extended clip. The time has come for the death-grind fun-free happy hour, cue Kataplexis.

This Canadian wrecking crew are relentlessly crushing, suffocating, and pummeling in approach. They offer a fair bit of contrast not readily present in most deathgrind, vacillating between short, purely grind-blasted death bursts and longer grindcore-fed chaotic death metal numbers. All of which pairs nicely with the occasional black metal poisonous riffs in their veins, coursing a darker shade of rot into the proceedings. Continue reading »

1349: “MASSIVE CAULDRON OF CHAOS”

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Oct 082014
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Norway’s 1349.)

Something that I’m more than willing to admit to is the fact that, when writing a review for NCS, I’ll take time to peruse other sites and see how the opinions I’ve formed stack up against those of other writers, and how well (or not) they fit with the common consensus.

I don’t see much of a problem with it personally, although I know several other writers who like to review in a vacuum, without the potential confounding influence of other people’s opinions. Often it means I stumble upon interesting factoids that I might otherwise have missed, which add context to my own work, or interesting interpretations that make me revisit what I’ve written in a different light.

Of course, occasionally you cross paths with the sort of completely biased review written by an oblivious fanboy, or an ignorantly negative attack written by someone with an obvious agenda, but mostly I find the opinions of other writers (particularly the ones whose opinions I really respect, regardless of whether I share them) to be a great help to me in my own work.

Why am I saying all this at the start of what’s meant to be a review of the (awesome) new album by 1349? Continue reading »

BLUT AUS NORD: “MEMORIA VETUSTA III — SATURNIAN POETRY”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Oct 082014
 

(This is the completion of a review that, in effect, began when I premiered the first advance track from the album.)

Two years ago Blut Aus Nord produced its last full-length album, Cosmosophy, which brought to a resounding close the 777 trilogy. Every album in the trilogy drew praise from critics and fans alike, despite the fact that no one of them sounded quite like any of the others. Cosmosophy left wide open the intriguing question of where Vindsval would go next — though in fairness, with a band as inventive, idiosyncratic, and contrarian as this one, that’s always a question.

Where Blut Aus Nord has gone next is Memoria Vetusta III — Saturnian Poetry. Having completed the very personal 777 project, in which Vindsval chose to work alone, the new album features a new drummer, a superb human one named Thorns, as well as stellar cover art by Kristian “Necrolord” Wahlin. But what about the music?.

The reappearance of the Memoria Vetusta title will no doubt have fans thinking about the first two albums bearing that same name, despite the fact that Dialogue With the Stars followed Fathers of the Icy Age by roughly 13 years and Saturnian Poetry comes more than five years after the release of Dialogue. In short, this is no trilogy; unlike 777, these are not three parts of a single massive piece of music. But at the same time the resurrection of that title, which refers to memories of what is long past, was not done carelessly — the new album makes a fitting companion for the first two. Standing alone, Saturnian Poetry is a superb achievement. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries