Album Reviews Archives - Page 52 of 545

DÖ – UNIVERSUM

Sep 232024

(Andy Synn drinks deep from the cosmic cauldron with the new album from Finnish doom-lords DÖ)

Have you ever seen the movie Mandy?

It’s a Prog Rock Stoner Doom Death Metal revenge story that seems to exist on an alternate plane of reality just widdershins to this one… and is easily one of my favourite films of all time.

And something tells me that Finnish audio-freaks DÖ would definitely love it (in fact, I am willing to bet they’ve seen it, and loved it, already) because their new album, Unversum, possesses that same sort of psychoactive, synaesthetic, widescreen intensity… albeit with significantly less Nicolas Cage.

SHADES OF BLACK: A COMMEMORATION OF THE DARK SOLSTICE

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Sep 222024

(written by Islander)

In the Northern Hemisphere today marks the autumnal equinox, the first day of fall and the point in which the Sun is directly above the equator and the hours of day and night are nearly equal (equinox is a Latin word for “equal night”). In the Southern Hemisphere, today marks the vernal equinox, the first day of spring.

From here on in the north, darkness will steadily increase, no longer merely equal, until we reach the winter solstice, which this year happens on Dec. 21, and then the process will begin to reverse.

I know you didn’t come here for astronomical info, and I’m confident that nearly everyone stumbling into this post already knew all that, but in a Sunday column devoted to black- and black-adjacent metal it’s hard to resist the observation that darkness now begins its reign once more, a coronation that doesn’t always fall on a Sunday.

To commemorate the ascending reign of darkness in our skies, here’s some dark music for you. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GRAVA — “THE GREAT WHITE NOTHING”

Album Reviews, Premieres 2 Responses »

Sep 202024

(written by Islander)

The 2022 debut album from the Faroese/Danish sludge/post-metal metal trio Grava was an unusually compelling union of visual and musical art. If you’ve seen the cover of Weight of a God (here) and then listened to any of the songs, you already know how well the image matched the crushing music and the album’s utterly bleak conception.

That cover was conceived with one track principally in mind, a song named “Crusher” about a man condemned to be trampled to death by a work elephant in front of a crowd of onlookers, told from the point of view of the condemned man, who sees the beast as the manifestation of a god — a perception that connects to the album title.

All the songs on Weight of a God portrayed different instances of a human being meeting death, seen through their eyes at the last moment. Grava continue telling such harrowing tales on their follow-up album The Great White Nothing, which we’re about to premiere in full, one week away from its release by a trio of labels.

Once again, the cover art (again created by Johannes Larsen) vividly connects to some of those terrible stories, and to the album’s title, as explained in introductory comments provided by vocalist/guitarist Atli Brix Kamban: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACK MOLD — “IN THE DIRT OF OBLIVION”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Sep 192024

(written by Islander)

“Having named themselves for a particularly nasty-looking, fast-spreading, difficult-to-remove, and potentially dangerous fungus, Portugal’s Black Mold churn out a nihilistic amalgam of black metal and punk that makes their disgusting namesake seem mild.”

That’s how we began our premiere of a song in the early days of this month from Black Mold‘s new album In the Dirt of Oblivion, which will be released by Helldprod Records on September 20th.

The label provided their own preview of what the album holds in store for unsuspecting listeners: “[T]hese true spirits of the underground only have one thing in their minds. To drain the soul out of your body and fill it with darkness, hate and despair”.

We have some more words of warning, or invitation, depending on your predilections, but the main thing we have today is a full stream of all the album’s dirt and oblivion. It proves to be a lot more interesting and varied than you might be expecting from what you’ve read so far Continue reading »

NEBULOUS OBFUSCATION OF ESSENCE (RELEASES THAT STRAIN CATEGORIZING)

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Sep 192024

(We will let our Vietnam-based writer Vizzah Harri explain in his own words what he did in selecting the records reviewed in the following article, and why they are here now.)

What follows are other obscurities and arcane esoteric mysteries of the abstruse. If a more redundant sentence exists as title, I’m obviously ignorant of its existence. It’s almost October, I know, but my brain is still stuck in the heretofore, so the next few writeups will contain releases that happened at the end of the year of the rabbit (cat in Vietnam) and the beginning of the year of the dragon (earlier in 2024).

In signs of the times, it is easy to become but a whisper of grace wrapped in a facade of putrescence in the absolute cacophony and unceasing mass of new sounds. In this era of mass consumption, it is the underground at times where some of the truest art hides. Especially of the underground metal kind if you are so inclined. Only one of the releases to follow can be described as metal, though they all dabble in extremities in different senses. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THORIUM — “THE BASTARD”

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Sep 182024

(We welcome French metal writer Zoltar to NCS, and he makes his debut here with the following introductory review of a new album by Thorium which we’re premiering in full today in advance of its September 20 release by Emanzipation Productions.)

Thorium is an interesting beast. Not exactly just another side-project nor a full band per se, they do rear their ugly head whenever their leader and main man Michael Andersen of Withering Surface fame feels like it. And as it turns out, looks like lately, the man does really feel like playing good old and no frills death metal. And it shows.

In a way, The Bastard isn’t just some kind of reaction against the few years and painful gestation of the last Withering Surface – although that did play a small role, but I digress. It’s first and foremost the 49-year-old Andersen‘s love letter to the classic sound he was raised upon back in the late ’80s and early ’90s when a less confident and juvenile, yet already passionate, version of himself started dabbling in the underground through tape-trading and his own Emanzipation ‘zine.

Early reports of an album meant to originally be titled Sverige (that’s ‘Swedish’ for you in, erm, Swedish actually) proved at first to be a tad misleading as suggesting a sound firmly stuck in the early ’90s Stockholm style of Entombed, Grave, and so on. Then again, whereas there’s barely any fuzzy outpouring of the famed HM-2 pedal to be found here nor any D-beat parts and though it was ultimately retitled, it still somehow makes sense. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AVERNUS — “GRIEVANCES”

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Sep 182024

(written by Islander)

The first new album from Chicago’s Avernus in 27 years, which will be released at the end of this week by M-Theory Audio, is something like the closing of a circle (and the opening of other circles). Having been formed in 1992, and with a couple of early demos under their belts, they caught the attention of Marco Barbieri at Metal Blade, who became primarily responsible for including them on that label’s Metal Massacre 12 compilation, and would have signed them to something bigger on Metal Blade if Barbieri had had his way.

Avernus did go on to release their debut album …Of the Fallen on M.I.A. Records in 1997, and they followed that with a few more demos plus an EP, but the band fell away, releasing no new music after 2003… until this year.

Barbieri is now the president of M-Theory Audio, and thus the label’s release of a new Avernus album is a reunion that’s been decades in the making. Avernus has itself experienced a reunion, with a current lineup on the new album that includes three of the band’s original founding members (Rick Yifrach, Erik Kikke, and Rick McCoy), plus James Genenz (also a member of Jungle Rot), who joined the band in 1997.

Reunions of any kind are generally occasions for reminiscing and nostalgia, but this reunion has led to something new, an album of new music made by people who necessarily are very different people than the ones who made …Of the Fallen and all those demos in the ’90s — different because time re-makes everyone, in ways small or large.

What this particular reunion has accomplished, you will discover today, because we’re now premiering a full stream of the new Avernus album. Its name is Grievances. and it is stunning. Continue reading »

TYPHONIAN – THE GATE OF THE VEILED BEYOND

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Sep 182024

(Come and learn why the new album from Typhonian, out Friday on Transcending Obscurity, has reaffirmed Andy Synn‘s love for Death Metal)

Do I like Death Metal?

It seems like a pretty dumb question – I mean, I’ve toured with Hour of Penance, Blood Red Throne, The Monolith Deathcult, opened for Cryptopsy, Mithras, Darkane, and more – so of course I do!

But I get where people are coming from when they ask this question, because when it comes to many of the current “big” bands in the Death Metal scene… well, I’ve generally been a little more guarded with when, where, and how I dole out praise than a lot of other writers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve thrown a lot of love at artists like Tomb Mold, Ulthar, and Bæst, and am eagerly awaiting new albums from both Tribal Gaze and Ingurgitating Oblivion (though, spoiler alert, I’ve already heard the latter and will be reviewing it later this month), but I can’t help but feel like a lot of the more notorious names are playing it far too safe, happy to regurgitate the same recycled riffs and second-hand song ideas with only the most minor of variations (if any), because they know their audience will eat it up anyway.

Luckily, for every derivative disappointment that comes across my desk there’s almost always someone else doing something a little bit more interesting (to me anyway) – and while it was Typhonian‘s previous album (which you can, and should, read more about here) which initially piqued my curiosity, with The Gate of the Veiled Beyond they’ve really grabbed my attention.

WANDERING INTO BLACKENED REACHES — 4 CRITICAL BLACK METAL ALBUMS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Sep 172024

(In this article our Vietnam-based contributor Vizzah Harri brings us four reviews of four unusual albums from blackened realms — albums created by Skeletal Augury, Cemetery Trip, Conifère, and Xwîn.)

The following 4 albums have been on my to-do list for months. You won’t find a slew of reviews on their Bandcamp pages sharing the praises from bigger media outlets. I couldn’t even find many reviews of the albums themselves out there. And partially this could be because of it being one hell of a year for black metal, but isn’t that just every year?

If you like black metal, you’re bound to love at least one of what I’m sharing with you today. The only order here is chronological because I don’t have a favorite amongst them and their styles diverge violently. There were more albums which I will hopefully be able to get to soon, but 4 is a nice number for its tetraphobic propensities in East Asia. The number 4, you see, signifies shaking hands with Elvis (I only learned that slang phrase for death today). Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GORGERIN — “GORGERIN”

Album Reviews, Premieres 2 Responses »

Sep 162024

(written by Islander)

As trained self-defense advisers we urge you, before listening to the EP we’re about to premiere, to armor up with ballistic helmets and kevlar vests, and hunker down behind the thickest steal plating you can find. You might also want to have some antiemetics on hand, and a strong sedative available for the aftermath too.

Okay, we’re not trained self-defense advisers or medical professionals, but we do know gutting and gruesome goregrind when we hear it, and that’s what Québec-based Gorgerin catastrophically discharge on their self-titled mini-LP, now set for release by Gurgling Gore on September 20th. Continue reading »

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