OVERFLOWING STREAMS ON A SATURDAY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 072024
 

From midnight on Thursday to midnight on Friday we received 221 e-mails about recent and forthcoming heavy metal releases. That’s not counting the e-mails that were just trying to sell us clothing or physical editions of records that have been out for a while, or to announce tours and shows, or to promote music that’s utterly foreign to anything we cover here (no idea how we get on some of these distribution lists).

That’s what Bandcamp Fridays do to our in-box, and the same thing happens on social media. It’s no longer surprising. Bands and labels know that lots of metalheads wait for these days when more of the money they spend will go to bands and labels. But it sure as hell makes me feel like I’m drowning when I look for things to include in Saturday roundups following Bandcamp Fridays.

And that’s not counting all the new songs and videos that were already on my plate before Friday arrived. Continue reading »

KALANDRA: “A FRAME OF MIND”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Sep 052024
 

(We present Didrik Mešiček‘s review of a new album by the Norwegian band Kalandra, in advance of its September 13 release on By Norse Music.)

Nothing goes together as well as the extreme heat of the summer and really depressive black metal, right? Or is that just me again? Well, anyway, it’s basically autumn and surely we can agree this is a season for romance and softness – the leaves are turning a lovely colour and slowly withering away in a cruel but beautiful reminder of our passing nature. Yet few things in this world would be as pretty were they not as fleeting.

This article isn’t about extreme metal, nor about any sort of metal, really, it’s about a Norwegian band called Kalandra who play a sort of Nordic folk – but not in the vein of Wardruna, it’s a band with a more modern tone and expressing a softer, more feminine touch. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): EC{C}ENTRIC PENDULUM — “PERSPECTIVA INVERTALIS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 052024
 

The Indian metal band Ec{c}entric Pendulum send all sorts of signals about the nature of their music before you hear a single note. Their name of course, which kindles images of a swinging thing that doesn’t swing like you expect it will, and the quirky typography they use in spelling it. And then there’s the title of their forthcoming second album — Perspectiva Invertalis — a Latin phrase which means “inverted perspective”.

And then there’s that cover art up above by Sam Ektoplasm, which is (to put it mildly) out of the ordinary for a metal band (or any band).

Undoubtedly some of you are aware of what Ec{c}entric Pendulum do with their music, because they do have a previous album (Winding the Optics) to their credit, and they’ve played at Wacken Open Air in Germany (the first band to represent India there), and shared stages in both Europe and India with the likes of Opeth, Textures, Meshuggah, Kreator, Orphaned Land, and recently Suffocation.

But it’s been more than a dozen years since that first album was released, and nearly seven years since their Tellurian Concepts EP, and so even if you’ve heard what they’ve done in the past, it’s best to now listen with fresh ears to what they’ve accomplished on this new album, which will be released tomorrow via Subcontinental Records. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DRAGSHOLM — “SORROW HEXEN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 052024
 

(written by Islander)

“Blackened Death Metal for fans of Dissection, Behemoth, Dimmu Borgir, Sacramentum and Vinterland“. That’s how Horror Pain Gore Death Productions hails the music on the third EP from New Jersey’s Dragsholm, which the label will release tomorrow (September 6th).

That turns out to be a meaningful set of reference points for the four songs on Sorrow Hexen. And that title of the EP is a good reference point in itself, conjuring thoughts of both melancholia and the occult, both of which are features of the music’s atmosphere — though there are other features as well.

You’ll have an opportunity to experience everything Dragsholm bring to the table on Sorrow Hexen, here on the eve of its release, because we’ve got a full stream for you below. Continue reading »

NORNA – NORNA

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 042024
 

(Andy Synn has a new favourite artist/album he needs to share with you, in the form of Norna)

The phrase “Post Metal” is one of those genre terms which doesn’t necessarily have an agreed definition.

Some people use it to refer mostly to what are, in essence, Post-Rock bands who’ve decided to use certain more metallic elements (usually meaning a more heavily distorted guitar tone along with the occasional burst of blastbeats) while others reserve it for bands who exist on the more atmospheric end of the Sludge/Hardcore spectrum (most of the big names in the scene started out like this, for example).

For Swedish trio Norna, however, their approach to “Post-Metal” is all about attempting to refine things down to their raw essence, beneath and beyond the flashy technicality and mindless machismo so often still associated with the genre, to achieve the Platonic ideal of pure auditory weight and distortion-driven emotion.

And while their debut didn’t quite manage to achieve this – admittedly impossible – task, the band’s self-titled second album comes closer than most to achieving artistic apotheosis in molten metallic form.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SILVERN — “STARDUST SERMONS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 042024
 

(written by Islander)

The creation of underground metal is a global phenomenon, more extensive and varied in some countries than in others but still ubiquitous. Ukraine is one nation with an extensive and fairly multi-faceted history in the field, yet even when considering the music that’s currently being generated, the first thought that comes to most of us now is… war.

Now more than 30 months after Russia’s unprovoked invasion, the conflict, which the aggressors thought would end quickly, has settled into a grinding devastation with no end in sight, still peppered with almost weekly atrocities inflicted on non-combatants; this week, for example, brought Russian ballistic missiles that killed more than 50 people and wounded almost 30 others in Poltava, followed just yesterday by a nighttime missile and drone attack on Lviv that killed 7 and injured more than 50.

Life goes on, of course, even under the grim shadow of a war that will reach its thousandth day in November, and part of that life is the making of music, a visible way of defiantly demonstrating that life does indeed go on despite a tyrant’s determined effort to grind it into bleakness and despair. Continue reading »

VULVODYNIA: “ENTABENI”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 042024
 

(Our distinctive contributor, the South Africa born and Vietnam resident Vizzah Harri, is back at NCS with his review of a new album by the South African death metal band Vulvodynia, which was released in July of this year by Unique Leader Records.)

Click play with caution, because there is a real danger that your attention might be shanghaied for a full forty-one minutes and 8 seconds, the runtime for Entabeni, Vulvodynia’s fifth, released by Unique Leader Records (that’s if you’re not counting 2015’s Finis Omnium Ignorantiam ‘EP’ which clocked in over 34 minutes). Continue reading »

A DGR REVIEW ARCHIVE, PART II: DARKENED, DAGOBA, DELIRIA, DARK TRANQUILLITY

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 032024
 

(Still catching up with releases earlier in this year, but edging closer to the present, DGR has compiled four extensive reviews in the following column, forsaking the rest of the alphabet and delving into the new albums by Darkened, Dagoba, Deliria, and Dark Tranquillity)

To keep the introductory masturbation short: why I’m doing this is largely covered in Part One of this catching-up series. Every year there are a shit-ton of releases and a shit-ton more coming. We do our damndest to try and keep up but as the seasons change so too must we often cut anchor and get the fuck out here and onward to other coverage.

There are a lot of releases, though, that I swear up and down I am going to write about, to the point where tardiness of said review doesn’t matter nearly as much to me as it does getting the name out to people and seeing what they think. The interesting part lies in the conversation that follows, not necessarily just how late I was to the bus – sometimes to the point of the city removing that particular bus route altogether.

This latest batch, at the very least, isn’t as determined to be stuck in the month of May, and I even managed to get one that could be described as almost recent! Almost. That doesn’t mean I didn’t drunkenly stumble my way into a theme anyway. Continue reading »

NAILS – EVERY BRIDGE BURNING

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 032024
 

(Wil Cifer reviews the new album by Nails, released August 30th by Nuclear Blast)

Thankfully, during the 8 years since You Will Never Be One of Us, Todd Jones just released a few splits and 7-inches rather than work on the issues spurring the anger that gives “Imposing Will” its feral menace.

The new album finds them moving in a more Hardcore direction – though the drumming has a more Slayer-like precision due to the presence of Carlos Cruz behind the kit – with Jones joined by a new line-up this time around which includes Andrew Solis (Despise You) playing bass and Shelby Lermo (Ulthar) on guitar.

That being said, the main influence of Grindcore lingers on in the way these raging riff fests get crammed and bullied into a savage series of sub-two-minute bursts of brutality.

Continue reading »

OCEANS OF SLUMBER – WHERE GODS FEAR TO SPEAK

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 032024
 

(Andy Synn dives deep into the new Oceans of Slumber album, out next week)

It is, quite frankly, borderline criminal that we haven’t all helped make Oceans of Slumber a bigger commercial and critical success.

Sure, the group has had issues with maintaining a consistent line-up, and they’ve yet to create an absolute classic that’s consistently awesome all the way through, but the highlights of their back-catalogue – combining the always stunning vocals of Cammie Beverly and the punishing percussive power of her husband Dobber with a visceral and vibrant variety of progressive riffs, cinematic synths, and lithe, limber bass-lines – have always, in my opinion at least, outnumbered their occasional musical missteps.

Hell, the gloomy Southern Gothic glamour of 2022’s Starlight & Ash could – and should – have led to some serious mainstream crossover success… but somehow the band still didn’t get their due.

Well, it now looks like all that rejection (ok, it’s not like the group are total unknowns by any means, they just have yet to receive the push they properly deserve) has come home to roost as, for better or worse (but mostly for better), it’s clear that Where Gods Fear to Speak is the sort of album that was written solely for the band’s own enjoyment and artistic fulfilment.

Continue reading »

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