ENSHADOWED: “MAGIC CHAOS PSYCHEDELIA”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Jan 072013
 

(We’ve been eagerly awaiting this album for almost one full year, and it’s now on the brink of release. Below, Andy Synn reviews the new work of Enshadowed from Greece — Magic Chaos Psychedelia.)

It always strikes me as funny that there’s such dissension and division between the Black Metal and Death Metal camps. Fans of Death Metal still dismiss Black Metal for not being “brutal” enough, and  devotees of Black Metal dismiss Death Metal… simply because it’s NOT Black Metal. Confusingly, even Blackened Death Metal often seems to have its own specific fanbase, as if its parents are somehow ashamed of this bastard child of extremity.

Thankfully though, we have bands like Enshadowed. They aren’t “Blackened Death Metal” – the purest Black Metal fire runs through their veins – yet they somehow manage simultaneously to be both blacker than black, and deader than death. That’s one of the things that makes the band so interesting – without meaning to, they’ve become a chameleonic entity, one that appears different depending on where you’re looking from. Continue reading »

MOURNING WOLF: “ELMHAVEN”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  15 Responses »
Jan 072013
 

(Wolves stick together. In this post, BadWolf reviews the brand new debut EP by Mourning Wolf.)

I’ve been hearing about Mourning Wolf since the band’s first practices. As a matter of fact, it’s about all that the project’s vocalist, Clint ‘Darkness’ Harkness, talked about for months. Readers may recognize Harkness as the lead singer of Lansing, Michigan’s The Devastator. He’s right to be excited about the project—the Elmhaven EP is rock-solid.

Mourning Wolf blends two disparate, but equally melodic strains of heavy music into a cohesive whole.   In the first place, their music owes a great deal of debt to the kind of melodic metalcore that Headbanger’s Ball peddled in the naughty aughts. For example, the first segment of “Elmhaven Part II” could pass as an unreleased demo by Darkest Hour, or early Killswitch Engage. Wisely, the band avoids the saccharine clean singing and sentimental lyrics, lest the music veer into self-parody. Mourning Wolf diverge from melodic metalcore in another critical arena: the first part of Elmhaven clocks in at almost eight minutes, and its successor breaks the eleven minute mark.

The second ingredient in Mourning Wolf’s music is longform ambient black metal, the kind of music Wolves in the Throne Room and Alcest play. If Mourning Wolf were from California or Washington, someone would have called them Cascadian by now. Continue reading »

KATAKLYSM: “SERENITY IN FIRE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jan 052013
 

(TheMadIsraeli continues his reconsideration of the music of Kataklysm. To see what this is all about, check out his introduction to the series here. Previous installments can be found via this link.)

Serenity in Fire (2004) is the first of newer Kataklysm albums I heard in full, and I have to say it still holds up as one of the best and most consistent representations of their modern sound.  It benefits immensely from an almost perfect combination of melody and ballsy groove on songs like “As I Slither” (a song which musically fits its name) or the album’s extremely infectious opener “Ambassador Of Pain”, which has a Slipknot-ish feel in a good way.

There are other songs on this particular album that also really get me going, such as the blackened melodic death like fury of “For All Our Sins” or the outright blistering chaos of “Blood On The Swans”.  The closing track “Under the Bleeding Sun” is also quite good, invoking Dark Tranquillity a bit.

This is a good album and it’s a fun album.  Definitely worth a listen.  Music after the jump. Continue reading »

ROTTEN SOUND: “SPECIES AT WAR”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Jan 042013
 

Rotten Sound’s new six-song EP Species At War is scheduled for release by Relapse Records on January 22 in North America. Yesterday TheMadIsraeli and I had the privilege of listening to the EP, and after calmly reflecting upon it, we each had some thoughts about the experience that we wish to share with you.

TheMadIsraeli

Some collections of music serve as nothing else but a vessel through which the hand of God himself smites you with a swarm of cannibalistic locusts with teeth soaked in battery acid.  This EP is literally the sonic equivalent of being punished for your sins.

I mean, you think you’re some tough motherfucker right?  You ain’t above punchin’ rats.  You don’t give two fucks.  I’m afraid, however, Rotten Sound begs to differ.  From the opening salvo of “Cause”, which turns itself into weaponized audio, filling the listener full of holes and eventually obliterating you like an AA12 (for those who don’t know, that’s a fucking fully automatic shotgun), Species At War serves more as an epic-length single song by grindcore standards, split into parts, eight minutes in total of total fucking… I don’t even.

First must-own EP of 2013. Get it. We all deserve this kind of beatdown once in awhile. Continue reading »

ÆTHER REALM: “ONE CHOSEN BY THE GODS”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Jan 032013
 

 

(In this post, NCS writer DGR reviews the debut album by Æther Realm, which is scheduled for release on January 8 and can be ordered here.)

Æther Realm are a four-piece melodic death metal band from Greenville, North Carolina. They’re a bunch of young upstarts who have found the recipe to make music that sounds so much like their influences that they have shot past the point of merely paying tribute and landed right next to them.

Their brand of melo-death falls heavily into the realms of bands such as Ensiferum, Kalmah, and Turisas. There’s enough of the pagan sound as promoted by the aforementioned bands, but with a hurdy-gurdy folk influence as well, to make a band located on the east coast of the United States sound like they hail from the colder sections of Europe. They’ve even jokingly had a note on their Facebook page which states,  ‘We Are Not From Finland’.

For much of the last year, Æther Realm have been building toward the release of their debut album, One Chosen By The Gods, and that is now set for January 8. One Chosen By The Gods is a nine-song affair, and if you’ve been following this band for a bit (I gave them a small shoutout in my 2011 year end roundup here at NCS, so maybe since then?) then you’re probably already familiar with three of the tracks (“Swampwitch”, “Ravensong”, “Odin Will Provide”). But of course the album delivers much more.

And if you haven’t previously been exposed to Æther Realm, then One Chosen By The Gods will come as one of the lead-off pleasant surprises of 2013.

Continue reading »

AFTER OBLIVION: “STAMINA”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jan 022013
 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli reviews the 2012 debut of a band from Bosnia and Herzegovina named After Oblivion.)

You know what’s overrated in metal?  Diversity.  Sometimes you just need a straight IV of PCP jolted into your neck to send you into a convulsive fit of headbanging fury.  What does this review have to do with diversity?, I know you are asking.

Well, After Oblivion’s debut Stamina is aptly named.  It’s a torrent of fierce technical thrash metal reminiscent of legends such as Coroner or Anacrusis with some nice scathing Schuldiner-worship vocals to taste.  Every song is in the same key, uses the same scales on the guitar front, and I think all are even at the same fucking tempo BUT I GIVE NO FUCKS.  This is a balls-to-the-wall assault of technical melodic riffage with paint-stripping screeches.  I’m reviewing this album late in the year, very late (oh wait! it’s the new year!), as it came out back in October, but I just wanted to get in a quick word about these guys.

The opener “Deliverance” will pretty much tell you everything you need to know about this band.  This is a precision strike so deadly and refined you’ll feel like you’re in the heyday of technical thrash and death metal in the 80’s.  This effect is especially helped by the album’s production, which is crisp, clean, yet still has an old school punch and ghetto quality to it.  I especially love the drum tone. Continue reading »

OMNIUM GATHERUM: “BEYOND” (Three Thumbs Up)

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 312012
 

(Our sadistic streak continues with the third early review of Omnium Gatherum’s new album.  This one comes from TheMadIsraeli.  The first two can be found here and here.)

It isn’t even 2013 yet and already we at NCS are getting pimp-slapped by the hand of Zeus himself in the form of Omnium Gatherum’s new album Beyond.  As Islander said in his review, melodic death metal of the darker sort had an absolutely fucking killer year in 2012, and to get hit with something of the same ilk already for 2013 gives me have very high hopes for the new year.

I will admit, this is one of those bands who I loved whenever I ran across them but never dove into out of sheer laziness or occupation with other things.  I can say, however, that I’ve dived into this album, drowned, been brought back to life, and have repeated this cycle over ten times in the last twenty-four hours.  Beyond is a dense, layered, passionate, and macabre work that could very well already seal my first favorite for 2013.

Like all melodic death metal that’s been killing it lately, Omnium prefer to immerse you in layers of interwoven melody lines as opposed to hard-hitting riffs, arming themselves with depressing yet infectious-as-plague melodies, ever-driven drum work, and a keyboard with a very Blade Runner-esque feel to it. Continue reading »

KATAKLYSM: “THE PROPHECY”, “EPIC: THE POETRY OF WAR”, “SHADOWS AND DUST”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Dec 312012
 

(TheMadIsraeli continues his reconsideration of the music of Kataklysm. To see what this is all about, check out his introduction to the series here. Previous installments can be found via this link.)

The Prophecy (Stigmata of the Immaculate) (2000) is definitely the weakest entry in Kataklysm’s body of work up to this point despite the fact it is more certifiably brutal than the album previous.  This also begins the thing about Kataklysm that is really going to irk me for the rest of this discography — opening albums with downright stupid monologues or silly movie quotes.  This is also going to be the shortest review of this series up to this point, so I think we’ll just include reviews of two additional albums because of that.

The Prophecy can be summed up pretty easily.  It’s nine songs of bland, uninspired, blasting melodic death metal that attempts to recapture an intensity reminiscent of the band’s Sylvain Houde era material that they just don’t have it in them to do anymore.  A bad move on the band’s part.  The mix is also intrusively grating in all the wrong ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5m5v71ePyE
Continue reading »

SHATTER SILENCE: “GLORY WILL UNDER THE SUN”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Dec 302012
 

(In this post TheMadIsraeli reviews the 2012 album from Japan’s Shatter Silence.)

I generally think Japan’s metal scene sucks.  Watching from afar, it seems to me that for as much as many Japanese worship the music, as much as they are such rabid fans of it, very few of them “get” metal when it comes to creating it.  What’s even weirder is that the bands who DO seem to get it, who produce badass shit that sounds like the musicians have a grasp on the music, seem to be completely overlooked within Japan.  This is only what I and friends have witnessed, so if anyone wants to prove me wrong I’d be glad to find that out.

Shatter Silence are one of those badass bands. Hailing from Osaka, they deliver a blistering blast-furnace style of melodic death metal, intense in technical riffing and with thrash speed and relentlessness.  This is the band’s sophomore effort; I’ve only heard a couple tunes off the debut and it seems just as killer, which is why it perplexes me that this band only has 300+ likes on Facebook.  These guys do this style every bit as well as the Europeans, maybe even better in some cases than newer releases from the West.

The opener “Awake in Decay” is testament enough to this fact.  It’s a whirlwind of molten riffs played with majesty and fury.  The high speed pedal-point riffing and harmonized, almost black metal tremolo picked attack of this song, combined with the propulsive drum work brimming with energy, make for a pretty good introduction to what this band is all about.

Your only moment of respite is the introduction to the band’s clean vocals, which in this case take the form of a band-wide layered choral approach.  It’s interesting, since they never once have a single voice during the clean vocal sections.  It creates something of an angelic feeling in the midst of what is otherwise music that strips flesh from bone.   Continue reading »

OMNIUM GATHERUM: “BEYOND” (Two Thumbs Up)

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Dec 302012
 

If there were a Hell, a special room would be reserved in it for the kind of sadists like us who publish enthusiastic reviews of new albums months before their release. But in our defense, Omnium Gatherum’s new album is one of those that, once heard, must be trumpeted to the skies without delay. Keeping quiet about it is simply too much to ask.

We’ve already posted Andy Synn’s detailed review, and we have at least one more coming in the near future, so I will be brief, especially because I’m still trying to finish compiling our list of 2012’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Speaking of which, with 2013 just around the corner, it’s time to start making a list of  candidates for the most infectious songs of next year. I have no trouble deciding which songs from Beyond belong on that list:  all of them.

Good lord, there ought to be some kind of law against stuffing a single album with so many undeniable melodic hooks and neck-snapping rhythms, or at least some requirement that they be shared with bands who slave away for years and never come up with anything as good as any song picked randomly from this album. Hell, the ballad “Who Could Say” would be a radio hit even in our metal-challenged nation if the vocals were exclusively clean instead of being mixed with Jukka Pelkonen’s monstrous roars.

But don’t get the wrong idea: despite the tremendous melodies, this is still very heavy, very powerful music, as often doom-shrouded and melancholy as it is furiously hard-charging. And despite the alluring simplicity of all the viral riffs, the music is multi-layered, with depths left to plumb after the first listen. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries