FLUISTERAARS: “DROMERS”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Jan 312014
 

(BadWolf reviews the debut album by a Dutch black metal trio known as Fluisteraars, which was released a few days ago by Eisenwald.)

I’ve lived through ups and downs with lo-fi long-form black metal. On the one hand, the millennial USBM style, particularly the work of Krieg and the Lurker of Chalice record, made powerful inroads for black metal into my musical library. I’m also an absolute sucker for anything resembling the ten-plus-minute Tolkien worship of Summoning. On the other hand, I was never all about the blown-out Burzum style, and I prefer crusty Darkthrone to their earlier stuff (though I’ve been spinning that Ravishing Grimness quite a bit in this icy, polar weather). So imagine my surprise when an old-style euro black metal release, by Dutch trio Fluisteraars, comes across my desk and usurps my Behemoth listening. What I found has made the perfect companion to my past few days of sub-zero drives into the office.

Dromers, the first Fluisteraars record, consists of three extended tracks—in fact, the promo listed the songs in the style of an LP, with “De Doornen” taking up all of side A, and “Kudeddier” and “Wortels Van Angst” taking up side B. Add to the mix a folksy, almost Enslaved riff style, and a super-creepy cover, and I was hooked. Continue reading »

OCELOT OMELET: “PRESENT IN THE DARK” (A REVIEW AND A REMEMBRANCE OF A LIFE LOST)

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Jan 302014
 

I’ve been meaning to write about this EP by Seattle’s Ocelot Omelet for months, and finally kicked myself in the ass hard enough to get it done (I blame my delay on fear of suffering a hamstring injury). It’s different in some ways from most of the music we cover at NCS, but despite my tunnel-visioned, metal-only approach to what I usually consume, I’ve enjoyed it so much that not writing about it would be… immoral.

The EP is entitled Present In the Dark and it consists of three songs, one of which simply has a question mark for its title. I know some people find genre labels useful, but when I try to think of them in this case, a question mark is what comes to mind first, because trying to affix labels to this music isn’t easy. But to make a stab at it, I’d say it’s like a mash-up (and a seamless one) of throwback psychedelia, sludgy stoner doom, and progressive rock, swimming in a dark narcotic haze.

“Out of the Frying Pan and Into Another Frying Pan” is the catchiest and most “accessible” of the three songs — at least after the squeal and drone of feedback and the squalling, shrieking sounds of the guitar in the song’s intro. After that, the music really starts to roll, with fat sludgy riffs and drum and bass lines that you can feel in your spine. Continue reading »

SUNN O))) / ULVER: “TERRESTRIALS”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Jan 292014
 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews the new collaborative album by SUNN O))) and ULVER.)

Three tracks may not seem like much, on the surface of things, yet, as with all things involving their creators, appearances can be deceiving.

You see, these aren’t just any three songs, they’re three songs that are the product of a secretive, clandestine collaboration between prophetic drone disciples Sunn O))) and esoteric audio alchemists Ulver.

The existence of this enviable (to some, still unbelievable) musical pairing only became apparent a few months ago, though its roots extend all the way back to a fabled and near mythical meeting in Oslo, August, 2008.

It was here that Sunn O))) locked themselves away at Ulver’s Crystal Canyon Studio, beginning one evening and ending the following dawn, to record three “live in improvisation” pieces… for what purpose as yet unknown.

Over the intervening years the Norwegian new-age nihilists (with periodic input from the irrepressible Stephen O’Malley, who would occasionally return to the scene of the initial crime to offer his inimitable assistance) have cut and pasted, chipped and painted, mixed and moulded these three compositions– adding, subtracting, metamorphosing and mutating – into the final forms we see here today. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: PUTREVORE AND PUTREFACT — “FUNEBRE PLAGUE INTO DARKNESS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  12 Responses »
Jan 272014
 

Germany’s Unholy Prophecies has just released a 7″ split that for me is the stuff of daydreams, even though it sounds like a waking nightmare. The split joins together two of the best and most hellish propagators of old-school death metal who are currently active, and they have both outdone themselves. The bands are Putrevore and Putrefact, and their split is entitled Funebre Plague Into Darkness.

PUTREVORE

Putrevore is a joint project of Sweden’s Rogga Johansson (Ribspreader, Paganizer, Bone Gnawer, Demiurg, etc.) and Spain’s Dave Rotten (Avulsed, Christ Denied). I discovered Putrevore through their second album, 2012’s Macabre Kingdom. If you were looking for pure, unadulterated, unforgiving, horrific death metal in 2012, you couldn’t go wrong with that record. You still can’t. It’s an unstoppable battle tank that’s both catastrophic in its atmospherics and also strangely addictive, so much so that I included one of its tracks on our list of the year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs”.

Putrevore’s track on the new split is “A Cold Grasp In the Night”, and it’s utterly obliterating. The riffs come fast and furious, like an over-heated pile-driver fueled by an accelerant that puts gasoline to shame. The drumming is superb, and superbly merciless. And Dave Rotten’s vocals sound like they’re welling up from a deep sewer that hasn’t been flushed clean in decades. And before the song ends, it dives into an off-speed crush-fest that’s just as compelling as the full-bore adrenaline surge that precedes it. A thoroughly energizing song that will zap you right in the brainstem. Check it out: Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: GAPED – “THE MURDEROUS INCEPTION”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Jan 272014
 

(In this post our friend from The Dominican Republic, Vonlughlio, provides a guest review of the recently released debut EP by Australia’s Gaped.)

First of all, I would like to thank Islander for the opportunity to write for NCS about a band that I discovered last year, while doing my year-end list.  That band is a death metal act named Gaped from Newcastle, Australia, signed to Lacerated Enemy Records. Gaped is the brainchild of Ryan Huthnance, who is the vocalist and plays all the instruments, with lyrics written by Shane Watts (Nekrology and ex-Osmium Grid).

As I mentioned, I discovered this band while doing my list. Up to that moment, I only had two EP’s that I had really loved throughout 2013.  While compiling the list I decided to check out the label’s FB and saw that they had posted the single “Realm of Impurity” from Gaped’s upcoming EP The Murderous Inception and decided to listen (plus, the cover art by Mottla Brutal Art is just killer).  So for the next couple of days, I found myself listening to the song over and over. It’s really groove-oriented, with killer riffs, and the vocals were just insane.

Once the EP was released, I went to the label’s Bandcamp (where I had purchased some of Lacerated Enemy’s other releases) and right there discovered that Gaped had recorded a cover of a Cannibal Corpse song (“Stripped, Raped and Strangled”). I mention this because “Realm of Impurity” had reminded me of CC and some other old school death metal acts. But anyway, I listened to the whole EP and bought it right away. Continue reading »

DESCEND: “WITHER”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jan 232014
 

(Here we have TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by a Swedish band named Descend.)

Progressive death metal is in an odd place right now. You either have to dive into borderline avant-garde territory that’s not always (and is usually rarely) successful, you dive into the alien and strange like Martyr or Anata, or you have to turn to the more melodic, more methodical sort like latter-era Death, Carcariass, or Opeth. The first school is often unsuccessful, the second school has monumental names behind it that make it hard for a band to make their own way, so the third nowadays is often the best option. At least from my perspective.

Descend are a band I was not familiar with, although they have multiple releases. They fall into that third category I mentioned. Shades of Opeth, In Mourning, Carcass, and Death are mainly what come to mind here. I’ve never checked out Descend’s previous full length Through the Eyes of the Burdened, so I don’t know if there’s been any evolution in sound or not. I do know, though, that their new record Wither kicks a fuck ton of ass. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: WILDERNESSKING — “THE DEVIL WITHIN”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Jan 232014
 

I haven’t written a review in almost a month. The list of releases I want to write about has now grown so long that I know I’ll never succeed in completing all of them. And yet when I saw that Wildernessking released The Devil Within yesterday, I immediately bought a download of the EP, listened to it repeatedly, and wrote what you’re about to read.

I suppose this impulsiveness derived in part from the soft spot I have for bands located in places far from the biggest global markets for metal, and so remote that touring beyond a few cities is almost impossible for most bands. Cape Town, South Africa, is one such place. But mainly it’s because I had such high expectations for the music based on what Wildernessking have done before.

First came their 2012 debut album, The Writing of Gods In the Sand (which became the source of one of our Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs of 2012). To steal words from my own review, it bound together styles from a variety of genres (including black metal, post-metal, and Enslaved-style prog) to create “a uniquely effective expression of power and emotion, a blending of light and dark, soft and hard, beauty and voraciousness.” Continue reading »

ISKALD: “NEDOM OG NORD”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jan 222014
 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Norway’s Iskald, which just may be the best of their storied career.)

Majestic. Masterful. Malevolent.

Passionate. Progressive. Powerful.

No, those aren’t the taglines to this year’s latest Oscar-baiting epic, they’re the words that immediately came to mind whilst enjoying my first listen to Iskald’s fourth album Nedom Og Nord.

Now Black Metal, for all its evocative imagery and striking musical palette, can sometimes be a difficult genre to talk about… at least in a fresh way.

That’s not because it’s become completely swamped by cliché (like all genres, there are those who go beyond it, and those who sink beneath it…) but because there’s a particular vocabulary so closely tied to how we talk about the genre.

“Chilling”, “Frostbitten”, “Grim”… all words that evoke the cold, frozen heart of the genre, and all words which crop up (in various permutations) throughout any discussion of it and its myriad forms, from its most basic, to its most esoteric.

And there’s a feeling that Iskald know this, because this time around they’ve pulled out all the stops to make this album truly definitive. Continue reading »

SOREPTION: “ENGINEERING THE VOID”

 Album Reviews  14 Responses »
Jan 212014
 

(Here we have TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by Sweden’s Soreption, which will be released on February 18 by Unique Leader.)

I first heard about Swedish tech-death Cthulhu Soreption when Vildhjarta mastermind Daniel Bergstrom told me to check them out, hailing them as the new flagship name of technical death metal. I listened to their 2010 debut Deterioration of Minds and was blown away by their brand of mechanical madness. Not only were these guys tighter than advanced machinery, they knew how to write technical death metal that was engrossing on a musicianship level, yet still concise and to the point. That’s a pretty hard thing to do in this style, considering that the vast majority of kindred albums mainly suffer from the writing of songs that just meander through riff sprees and never stick out.

Soreption definitely nailed it with their debut, and now with the band’s sophomore effort Engineering the Void they have created the sonic equivalent of a planet destroyer. Seriously, the record is what I imagine the Earth getting crushed by a giant machine built for grinding planets into dust would sound like. It’s so cold, so devoid of mercy, that this would put anyone not up to the listen into a corner in the fetal position. It’s an autonomous meat grinder, a fucking genocide mechanism, this is tech death at its most pristine and most carnivorous. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: “HARVEST OF SHAME” BY FIRST REIGN

 Album Reviews, Premieres  9 Responses »
Jan 202014
 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli reviews the debut album by First Reign from BC, Canada, and we bring you the premiere of a full-album stream.)

What a beast of an album.

Non-European melodic death metal that’s REALLY good is really hard to come by. It always has been. For every one band from somewhere else, you could name three European bands of at least equal weight. First Reign are a Canadian band who I believe are at the head of the class of what they do. I’ve covered them before, reviewing their debut EP, but with the band’s debut album, Harvest of Shame, they’ve undergone a transformation. They are more technical, more progressive, and with a much darker tonality.

Imagine the ferocity of At the Gates, the guitar acrobatics and power-metal clean interjections of Into Eternity (pre-Stu Block), and a Death-like sense of composition, combined with some traditional death metal carnage, and you have First Reign. Harvest of Shame is a bleak, twisting labyrinth of melodic death metal might. The band’s seamless integration of their various influences and their commitment to producing melodic death metal that is truly their own is astounding. I’d be hard-pressed to name any one band who truly sounds like this one, even though I can rattle off the names of others who have laid the groundwork for their sound. Continue reading »

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