AN NCS PREMIERE: KRIEG — “RETURN FIRE” (AND A REVIEW OF “TRANSIENT”)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Aug 192014
 

 

There’s a song premiere at the end of this post. It’s a really good song. Those of you who are squeezed for time or afflicted with attention deficit disorder, I won’t blame you if you jump to the bottom and press Play. But I’m going to have my say about the whole album, because Transient is one of the most interesting I’ve heard in 2014. It might even be the best album Krieg has yet produced in a career that’s coming up on two decades. And if you think that any one song on this album will faithfully represent all the rest, even the one we’re premiering, you might want to read on.

Increasing age is a double-edged sword for all of us, and it’s a particularly unpredictable blade for musicians, one that’s just as liable to cause self-inflicted wounds as to carve new trails through the underbrush. On the one hand, skills can improve and the accumulation of life experiences can add maturity and new depth to an artist’s creativity. But goddamn, it can also make you boring, or lazy, or both. Some bands are content to tread water, some of them try to force-feed a fire that died out long ago, and the sparks sputter instead of blaze. Transient is about the furthest thing you could imagine from that.

Neill Jameson (aka Imperial), the man behind Krieg, cemented his place in the black metal underground a long time ago. He’s older now. By the sounds of Transient, he might not be any happier, but he sure as hell isn’t treading water. What he’s done instead is to feed the smoldering fires of the black metal vehemence he has tended so well with an array of new and different fuels, producing flames of different colors, though the overarching emotional hue of the album as a whole is still mostly bleak, blasted, and broken. Continue reading »

THE STRIKE OF MIDNIGHT: A REVIEW AND FULL-ALBUM STREAM OF “NO MERCY FOR MAYHEM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Aug 182014
 

 

Fortune (or Satan) has smiled on us, because today we have been chosen to deliver unto you a stream of the new album by Midnight, from beginning to end, from “Penetratal Curse” to “Aggressive Crucifixion”, and beyond. And we introduce you to No Mercy For Mayhem with this review of the album by our brother BadWolf:

 

Jamie “Athenar” Walters spent a long time recording demos, 7-inches, and splits as Midnight before he released his debut album, much like many other solo black metal musicians in America. But that long gestation period, I’m afraid, is where the similarities end. Midnight is nothing like Krieg, Xasthur, or Weakling. Bedroom black metal? More like satanic sex dungeon metal-n-roll. The only thing atmospheric about Midnight is the thin film of grindhouse sleaze that permeates its propulsive stew of old-school black metal and cock rock.

Further far afield from midwest black metal, Midnight has a distinct look and aesthetic. With painted cover art featuring hooded executioners and scantily clad women, the band has a sense of style, all wrapped up in violence, delinquency, and BDSM naughtiness. For a pretty anonymous, gender-indifferent genre, Midnight deals with sexual subjects, while sporting a strong, theatrical sense—something that used to be a big part of black metal until everyone but Immortal forgot about it. Live, Midnight comes across like a crust-punk KISS, albeit with hoods instead of platform shoes (an upgrade, if you ask me).

Walters’s 2011 debut, Satanic Royalty, wound up being one of my favorite albums of that year—too bad I didn’t get a chance to hear it until 2012. That record mixed Venom-and-Motörhead-isms with arena-ready hooks. For the past two years, I’ve been frothing at the mouth to get a taste of its followup, and the Complete and Total Hell compilation album (reviewed here), though incredible, just did not scratch the itch. Seeing Midnight’s energetic performance at Maryland Deathfest 2013 only made the wait more unbearable. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: WEED PRIEST — “WORSHIP”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 182014
 

(In this post DGR reviews the 2014 EP by Ireland’s Weed Priest.)

Let’s sit down for a moment and have a quick heart to heart chat. I’m not the most worldly when it comes to heavy metal, but if you name your band Weed Priest, you can really only be one genre right? A name like that has to point to the stoner doom spectrum of things. Especially when it comes paired with artwork and a logo like what you see above (my goodness I like that artwork). So, while Galway, Ireland-based band Weed Priest may never be accused of burying the lead, you could definitely say that the group have the image side of things pinned down to a T.

Their newest release, the EP Worship, released August 1st, has a lot to live up to then — because a group who have so finely honed their image, down to the point where each member now refers to himself as “Brother _____” in their line-up listings, had better be good on the music side of things. Otherwise, it’s all wasted potential. Fortunately, Weed Priest do live up to their outward appearances and public personae about the best that anyone could have hoped for.

Worship is a retro-as-hell sounding disc, as if it were crafted as a worship ritual for the early seeds of doom, the occult, and stoner rock that were planted in the early 70’s. It sounds like it was recorded after a massive Sabbath binge, and it stands as an all-too-brief preview of what could be a really good run from a band with only two other releases to their name, if they stay on the course where Worship is pointing. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: VILE REGRESSION — “EMPIRES”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 162014
 

 

(Here we have yet another review by DGR, and this time the subject is the new album by an Irish band named Vile Regression.)

Even though it’s probably a bit formulaic at this point, I still love to introduce reviews by explaining how I found the band. So, let’s take a walk down memory lane for a little bit, as I tell a truncated version of my history with Dublin, Ireland-based Vile Regression and of websites gone by.

On the previous website that I worked for, one of our writers made it a routine during our two-year history that around St. Patrick’s Day he would try to share as much Irish metal as he could — stuff people hadn’t heard of, not the usual listing of bands. He really wanted to dig, find smaller groups, even go into local scenes if he could, to really try and put the country at the forefront at about the most stereotypical time possible.

Even though I jokingly poke fun at the reason for these bands getting listed on our site — and we returned to them numerous times throughout the following year — I still found a couple of really good groups, and that feature was instrumental in my discovery of some amazing stuff. Continue reading »

FERIUM: “REFLECTIONS”

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Aug 162014
 

(Guest writer Ty Lowery brings us this review of the 2014 debut album by Israel’s Ferium, which features cover art by Eliran Kantor.)

2014 has been a great year for technical death metal. Inanimate Existence, Hour of Pennance, Artifical Brain, and Archspire have all released albums this year, and that doesn’t even begin to touch the tip of the iceberg. There’s enough heads getting cut off on a daily basis to make Vlad the Impaler turn in his sword and adopt a more subtle life of knitting and macramé. What I’m trying to say is, sometimes you just need a break from all the ridiculously fast shred.

Enter Israel’s Ferium. These guys couldn’t be pinned down by Bullseye on his best day. One moment they’re thrashing their way through a flame-tongued lead accompanied by a mid-tempo blast beat and the next they’re flaunting a swagger not often seen in metal this heavy. It’s an intricate mix of groove and technicality that lends Reflections both approachability and sustainability. There’s enough beef there to keep the thrill-seekers satiated, with plenty of rolling technicality to intrigue even the most seasoned of death metal’s veterans, and then there’s just the nicest little sprinkling of groove (that swagger I was talking about) to make the prog kids raise an eyebrow over their thick framed glasses. Continue reading »

AEON OF HORUS: “EXISTENCE”

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Aug 152014
 

(Continuing with our week-long series of daily reviews by DGR, here’s a write-up on the 2014 album by Aeon of Horus.)

On occasion, it seems like we’ll randomly take the site through bursts of music that are coming out of Australia. Australia has a hell of a metal scene and it is one that always seems to have a couple of really good acts just off of the periphery and hidden from view. No idea why, whether it be travel expenses or those huge bodies of water that separate it from the nations where most of the media that cover metal seem to be based. Whatever the reason, we can use the power of the internet for some good, because it really has allowed us to stumble into and search out all sorts of amazing bands.

Aeon Of Horus are a Canberra, Australia-based progressive metal band. I hesitate to call them death metal, because outside of a chosen grunted vocal style the band are much more in favor of using different angular riffs, start-and-stop heavy dynamics, and various ways of interweaving a keyboard into the music.

They’ve received some critical notice before, yet 2014 brings forth only their second new album. They released an EP in 2011, but the gap between full albums is much larger, with a six-year space between the group’s new album Existence and their 2008 release, The Embodiment Of Darkness And Light. Continue reading »

UNWILLING FLESH: “BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD” (A REVIEW AND A SONG PREMIERE)

 Album Reviews, Premieres  6 Responses »
Aug 142014
 

Death metal of the old Swedish school, especially in its more melodic forms, is my metal comfort food. It proved to be my own gateway into ever-expanding realms of extreme music, and it still puts a smile on my face no matter how many times I revisit the classics. There’s something genuinely timeless about the style.

Of course, as every student of metal history is well aware, the decades that have passed since the early 90s have spawned increasingly diverse variations on the original template, with a steadily increasing tendency of many bands to pack their music with technical acrobatics or drown it in a murky, polluted, soul-sucking atmosphere of pure evil.  To find a new band who have directed their creative impulses back to the well spring is thus ironically refreshing, especially because what they’ve created is so tremendously good.

The band’s name is Unwilling Flesh, and its membership will come as a big surprise to most: It’s the brainchild and alter ego of multi-instrumentalist Andrew D’Cagna, who is better known for his work in such groups as Brimstone Coven, Obsequiae, Nechochwen, and Infirmary. It turns out that he, too, harbors a love for Swedish death metal. Fueled by inspiration from such old-school progenitors as Carnage, Eucharist, and Excretion, he has created an album under the Unwilling Flesh moniker entitled Between the Living and the Dead that’s due for release by Eihwaz Recordings (the sister label of Bindrune Recordings). Continue reading »

CIMMERIAN: “HOLLOWING”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Aug 142014
 

(Continuing with our week-long series of daily reviews by DGR, today we present his enthusiastic assessment of the second album by Illinois’ Cimmerian.)

Four drops of rain hit my car today. I know this because I was able get into my car and count them on the windshield, likely long after it happened. The skies, however, were still grey and overcast, which when your city was parked in the low 100s the previous week was an amazing sight. That means that it’s time to make the switch in moods from my love of hyperactive death metal and return to the cold shores of ethereal doom.

Long the forte of the European doom scene, the colder, more blue-feeling brand of doom has often found itself being exercised by the Scandanavian scene. However, over the last ten or so years, America has begun to throw its hat in the ring as second- and third-generation bands influenced by Europe’s love for the snow in musical format have begun to gel together. Many of these are young bands, seeking only to pay tribute to the groups they love, but others have really excelled beyond that simple first bar — becoming a representative of the melodeath/doom scene. Which is a long way to bring you to Cimmerian. Continue reading »

KERATOCONUS: “INANE LIVING CONDITIONS”

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Aug 132014
 

 

(As part of our week-long series of new reviews by DGR, today we bring you his write-up on the debut album by Keratoconus.)

Few things in the world make me happier than getting to run ridiculous cover art on the NCS frontpage for a few days that will at the very least make someone scrolling along the page do a double-take. It was one of the reasons I enjoyed reviewing GenocideGenerator’s 2013 release this year, because aside from the music, the knowledge that the artwork would be going on the frontpage was enough to carry me on cloud nine for a couple of days. Thus, we find ourselves with Keratoconus‘ big ol’ blotch of blue for its new disc Inane Living Conditions splattered all over our canvas of red and skulls that make up the NCS page.

We found Keratoconus, a one-man project run by one Sam A. Mudd based in the UK, after the main man behind it reached out to us on our Facebook page, describing the music as something of a mixture of death metal and grind, while also having a random smattering of electronics throughout. Which, if anything will go to show you that we do notice the folks posting on our FB page — we just get backlogged super-quick, but we do give everyone a chance. In the case of Keratoconus, the project is very interesting, but if discovering it accomplishes nothing else, at least it has provided me with the joy of putting that artwork up on the front page.

Inane Living Conditions is the first release that S.A. Mudd (as most of his accounts go by) has put out underneath the Keratoconus name, a release that has slowly been in the works over four years and has gone through constant reboots and different changes. This is going to sound like Greek to a lot of you but upon listening to it, the first thing it reminded me of was the British flip-side of the coin to Brandon Duncan’s The Sequence Of Prime project and its album -Inter. Both discs are one man-releases that at the easiest you could probably describe as very “On edge” — like the person behind it was slowly losing his mind and decided to scream about it over a bunch of bouncing guitars and hammering drums. Continue reading »

HYPERIAL: “BLOOD AND DUST”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 122014
 

 

(DGR has been on a review-writing tear — we’ll have something from him every day this week. Today he assesses the new release by Poland’s Hyperial.)

There are some bands out there where within the first thirty seconds of a disc, you get to know exactly what you’re in for. In the latest offering from Poland’s Hyperial, Blood And Dust, which hit in mid-July, the first thirty seconds of the song “The Plague Of The Used Masses” is a frighteningly fast and precise drum-fill-into-blast-beat combo alongside a poweful roar that moves right into a synth-backed, chugging riff. It’s a song of hybrid genres — of blackened death metal, the devastatingly precise drumming and syncopated guitar riffs of industrial death metal, the heavy groove sense of deathcore, and the huge orchestral swells that lend themselves well to symphonic death. It’s a tried and true combo, and in the case of Blood And Dust, one that sounds like the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic wasteland after a robot uprising.

The band appear to have packed as much as they can within the confines of four- to five-minute songs, with sounds that can be included on a CD that weighs its usual couple of ounces, but that can feel as dense as a brick of lead. Blood And Dust is one of those albums in which you can hear where everything was pulled from, and you can even think of one or two bands who are also doing something similar, but its the kind of music that still has life — it still hasn’t grown tired, it’s still as delicious as it was from the first bite. Continue reading »

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