DRIPPING DECAY: “RIPPING REMAINS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 242024
 

(Hot on the heels of their blistering debut album, Festering Grotesqueries, Portland’s Dripping Decay spewed forth a new EP in January 2024 via Satanik Royalty Records, and DGR finally caught up with it, provoking the following review.)

Always being behind the eight ball when it comes to playing catch-up with music releases has proven to be the best sort of motivator in a twisted perversion of the idea.

When you have a deadline upcoming there’s always a sense that you can relax a little, and we have been lucky enough to receive our fair share of early promo works that have allowed us time to really soak in a release and absorb as much as it can offer. But the ones where we miss the bus or discover later? Now it feels like we owe them, which is strange given that many of these are ones we’ve found on our own time or became part of our own private collections to dive into.

This is the case with Oregon’s Dripping Decay and their late-January EP Ripping Remains (we did receive a timely promo, btw). Continue reading »

ASEITAS – EDEN TROUGH

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 232024
 

(Andy Synn provides a preview, and a pre-review, of the new album from Aseitas, out May 30)

Let’s get one thing straight – I happen to think that Aseitas‘s second album, False Peace is… well, I’m not going to use the word “masterpiece”, because that word has been so over-used and bastardised it’s basically become worthless and/or meaningless these days (though I am still a fan of, very occasionally, using it in its original meaning)… but it’s definitely what I would call an unsung and underrated underground gem.

With a sound that runs the gamut from Artifical Brain to Zao (taking in influences from everyone from Gorguts to Godflesh, Car Bomb to Cattle Decapitation to Krallice along the way) it’s the sort of album which doesn’t fit neatly into any one box – being part Death, part ‘core, part Sludge, part Tech, and more besides – and established Aseitas as a band with the potential to find fans all over the musical map.

And now, after lying dormant for four long years, they’ve emerged from hibernation with a brand new album (set for release next week via Total Dissonance Worship), and a new mutation of their sound – but is their latest evolution full of hybrid vigour, or a genetic dead-end?

Continue reading »

CARRION VAEL: “CANNIBALS ANONYMOUS”

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May 222024
 

(Here, DGR devotes about 1400 words to extolling the virtues of Carrion Vael‘s newest album, which is out now on Unique Leader Records.)

There was a period maybe five or six years ago where a band like Carrion Vael would’ve found a good handful of compatriots within their current label home of Unique Leader Records. Their brand of high-speed melodeath, light implementing of symphonics to help break up the constantly whirring lead guitar, and tech-death hybridization has gone under a few names throughout the years – even cheekily referred to around here once as ‘black dahlia murder-core’ – but there was one pretty distinct carrier of that strain of metal, and at the time many of those groups would’ve been ensconced within the loving brutal bosom of Unique Leader.

However, things changed and something interesting happened within real time as the label’s priorities seemed to shift, favoring the low-and-slow approach of many up-and-coming deathcore groups, or leaning heavily into the brutal deathcore monstrosities that were being born out of former brutal death and gore-focused bands.

Nowadays the label is a tri-headed monstrosity of its own and many of the groups who were playing the high-speed, highly-technical style found a home in labels like The Artisan Era – whose own bands like Inferi found themselves leading the charge in recruitment – and Willowtip seems plenty happy to cast their net in those waters as well. Continue reading »

BLASTEROID – CRYPTS OF MIND

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 222024
 

(Andy Synn goes crypt-diving and tomb-raiding with Greek Prog-Tech shredders Blasteroid)

With so many releases coming out each and every month, it can be easy to lose track of bands you’ve previously enjoyed, especially when – as is the case here – we haven’t heard from them in almost seven years.

But Pepperidge Farm NoCleanSinging remembers.

NoCleanSinging does not forget.

Continue reading »

CONVULSING: “PERDURANCE”

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May 212024
 

(We present DGR‘s review of a new album from the Australian one-person band Convulsing, which was released this past March.)

If we can offer a bit of advice – armchair psychiatrists that we are around here – do not let anyone ever tell you that you’re going to have a good time with Convulsing‘s third album Perdurance.

Perdurance is not a ‘good times, happy fun times’ album. It’s a dissonant and ugly piece of work, one that is abrasive enough to smooth barnacles off of a ship. Perdurance is cavernous and noisey, Perdurance is expansive and heavy, but under no circumstances could you look at the bent contortions of Convulsing‘s third album and think to yourself ‘well, that’ll be a pleasant trip through the void’. Continue reading »

GATECREEPER – DARK SUPERSTITION

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
May 202024
 

(Is the new Gatecreeper a trendkiller, or just a trend-follower? Andy Synn sets out to find out)

Let me ask you a question – how important is originality to you?

No, it’s not a trick question. After all, I’ve stated before that making a good (or great) album doesn’t necessarily require you to be particularly original – let’s face it, the Metal scene does tend to love a good throwback (sometimes too much) – as long as the execution and (more importantly) the songwriting are good enough.

Case in point – Gatecreeper‘s third album is basically a Dismember record in all but name.

But while Dark Superstition has definitely gained an advantage by standing on the shoulders of giants, it remains to be seen whether it has the songs to properly stand on its own two (or ten) feet.

Continue reading »

ULCERATE: “CUTTING THE THROAT OF GOD”

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May 202024
 

(Below you will find DGR‘s extensive review of the newest album from NZ’s Ulcerate, in advance of its June 14 release by Debemur Morti Productions.)

Weirdly enough, I had to check to see who had penned the last few reviews for Ulcerate’s releases as they’ve crossed our desks in the burnt-out husk that is more colloquially known as the ‘NCS Office’. The situation was one of those, ‘I’m pretty sure it was me, I am not a thousand percent sure it was me’.

You’ll forgive someone, of course, who has been spending a decent block of their heavy metal writing ‘career’ within the distant chasms of the Ulcerate discography for experiencing some sense of disassociation with the self. It turns out, it has in fact been yours truly for the most part, which means we can now add ‘Semi-Expert on Ulcerate’ to the resume, which’ll be only the third or fourth strangest thing on there, placed right up next to ‘balloon animal fluffer’. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: AQUILUS, OPPRESS., AKVAN, NON EST DEUS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
May 192024
 

I made a bare-bones start on the writing of this column yesterday, and then halted that in order to venture into downtown Seattle for what turned into a long night of talking, eating, and drinking with DGR and former NCS scribbler BadWolf.

I woke up very late this morning for me, head stuffed with fuzz, and feeling very tempted not to finish what I started yesterday. But since I missed doing this column last week due to Northwest Terror Fest and likely won’t do one next Sunday due to Maryland Deathfest, I forged ahead… sort of.

Instead of trying to put into words everything I have been feeling about the music I chose for today, I can only offer relatively short recommendations. The glass isn’t even half full, but at least it’s not an empty glass. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THE TROOPS OF DOOM, SOL DE SANGRE, WEREWOLVES, COLDCELL, NIHILO, LACABRA, KYBALION, BALWEZO WESTIJIZ, KŌYA, WHARFLURCH, AMORPHIS

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 182024
 


Troops of Doom – photo by Cissa Flores

I wasn’t able to serve up a Saturday roundup last weekend due to working on Seattle’s Northwest Terror Fest, and it’s highly unlikely I’ll get one done next Saturday since I’ll be at Maryland Deathfest (if you’re there and spot someone who looks like a heavily tatted escapee from a nursing home, come say hi). So that makes this one kind of important, if only for me.

There’s gobs of new music to choose from, many more gobs than usual since I missed a week. And by the way, I’m using “gob” here as a word meaning “a large amount” and not its other meaning, i.e., “a lump or clot of a slimy or viscous substance”, though I have included a song off an album named Shittier/Slimier.

Ready, set, go! Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TLÖN — “THROUGH NEBULOUS SCARS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 172024
 

In May 1940 the great Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, widely credited as a founder of “magical realism” in literature, published a story named “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius“. In that mind-bending tale Borges was himself a protagonist. The plot concerns events going back as far as the early 17th century and culminates in a postscript, set in 1947. As summarized in The Font of All Human Knowledge:

“Told in a first-person narrative, the story focuses on the author’s discovery of the mysterious and possibly fictional country of Uqbar and its legend of Tlön, a mythical world whose inhabitants believe a form of subjective idealism, denying the reality of objects and nouns, as well as Orbis Tertius, the secret organization that created both fictional locations”.

That story inspired both the name of the new Scottish band Tlön and the lyrical themes of their debut EP Through Nebulous Scars — an astonishing mind-bender of its own that we’re helping spring upon an unsuspecting world today. Continue reading »

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