AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MONASTERY DEAD — “EGO SUM DOLOR”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 292024
 

Today we premiere a full stream of Ego Sum Dolor, the fourth album to emerge, after four years of work, from the Saint Petersburg death metal band Monastery Dead. It will be co-released on March 31st by Satanath Records (Georgia) and Australis Records (Chile).

If your Latin is rusty, the album’s title translate to “I am pain”, or perhaps “I am in pain”. Consistent with that title, the concept of the album is described as follows:

This is a story about a man doomed to experience all the suffering and torment destined for him in his life, here and now. He bears the burden of merciless retribution, which, like stigmata, he acquired by birthright, experiences pain and inflicts pain, is obsessed with destruction and destroys himself. His own wounds and those of his victims will never heal and will bleed forever.

Or to put it more succinctly: “The basis of the concept of the release is the idea that the real hell is our current existence on Earth.” Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MOUNTAIN SHADOW — “MOUNTAIN SHADOW”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 282024
 

As you can see, we’re premiering a full stream of the self-titled debut album by Mountain Shadow. In advance of the music stream we have delectable teasers to offer, beginning with this preview from Fiadh Productions, which will officially release the album tomorrow:

Mountain Shadow… is Pennsylvanian Folk Death Metal, existing between Archaic Death Metal, Atmospheric Black Metal, Funeral Doom & Bluegrass, exalting Appalachian Horror and the melancholic ruins of nostalgic America.

More teasers: The listing of instruments in the credits for the performances on the album, beginning with the two childhood friends who are the band’s members: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VERBERIS, ALLEGAEON, PARTY CANNON, MORTAL WOUND, VRYKOLAKAS, VERITERAS, OLD IRON, FRAIL BODY, ATARAXIA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Mar 282024
 

Lately I’ve been organizing these roundups of recommended new songs and videos in alphabetical order by band name, because that means I don’t have to spend any time thinking like a DJ, trying to figure out what makes sense in the flow of the music. Sometimes that has coincidentally led to interesting juxtapositions.

Today, however, I’ve chosen a different organizational scheme, because some of the songs naturally paired up with each other. So this collection includes a block of goofy stuff, a “hulking and hideous  death metal” block, a Seattle block, and some curveballs at the end, although the very end is more like a sequence of eephus pitches that sail in high and slow (look it up).

But to begin, you’ll find something that doesn’t fit anywhere else but left me wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Continue reading »

BRODEQUIN – HARBINGER OF WOE

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Mar 282024
 

(Andy Synn embraces his inner masochist with the torturous new album from Brodequin)

Let’s be clear about something… if they hadn’t disappeared for almost twenty years it’s highly likely that the name Brodequin would be talked about just as often, and held in as just as high regard, as the “Big Ds” (Dying Fetus, Deeds of Flesh, Defeated Sanity, Disgorge… the list goes on) of Brutal Death Metal.

Hell, some people already put them up on that same level, and with damn good reason, especially since their third (and, for a while at least, final) album, Methods of Execution, was one of the most definitively brutal, and brutally definitive, statements of the early 2000s.

But now they’re back, and the big question on everyone‘s lips is – has time dulled their blades, or are the terrible trio still just as sharp, and as sick, as ever?

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM/VIDEO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HIEROPHANT — “GATEWAY TO THE ABYSS”

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Mar 272024
 

In August 2022 Season of Mist Underground Activists released Death Siege, the very impressive fifth album by the Italian extreme metal band Hierophant. In his review at our site, Andy Synn noted that the album revealed the band “making an unexpected heel-turn away from the crusty, sludgy, Blackened Hardcore sound of their previous records to instead become a full-blown Black Metal band (albeit, one with a distinctly deathly tinge) in the vein of Death Fortress, Rites of Thy Degringolade, Panzerfaust“. Andy further wrote:

“[T]here’s no denying that this new, more blackened version of the band are still very, very good at what they do…. As a result I’d say this is the perfect jumping on point for potential new fans since – if the oppressive atmospherics and visceral sonic violence of closer “Nemesis of Thy Mortals” are anything to go by – Death Siege looks, and sounds, to me, like the beginning of a whole new era for the band”.

Following the release of Death Siege, Hierophant performed on some very big stages, honing their live rendition of the songs on Death Siege and burnishing their reputation. This led to the decision to record their performance at Hellfest 2023 in France, and to release it as Hierophant‘s first live album — Gateway to the Abyss — which will be released on Match 29th by the Dusktone label.

As icing on the cake, that show was also caught on film, and today we premiere the new album in tandem with an exceptional video. Continue reading »

VERWOED – THE MOTHER

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 272024
 

(Andy Synn reminds you all that it’s mother’s day this Friday)

As has been pretty well documented, I’m somewhat of a sceptic/cynic when it comes to “one man bands”.

The reason for this is that – in my estimation, at least – the lack of that collaborative creative push-and-pull which you get in a full band situation all too often results in a rather myopic view of things from the singular solo-artist, who may well have something they want to say (I’m not denying that) but doesn’t realise that it’s already been said, in much the same way, many times before.

There are, however, obvious exceptions to this “rule”… certain artists who don’t just possess the necessary vision, and the voice with which to express it, but are also self-aware enough to know that a big part of getting your message across is not only what you say, but how you say it.

And one of those artists is Erik Bleijenberg, aka Verwoed.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABOVE AURORA — “MYRIAD WOES”

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Mar 262024
 

Four years ago we premiered and reviewed at length The Shrine of Deterioration, the second album by the Polish “black/doom” band Above Aurora. It followed the dark and desolate path whose first steps were marked by the band’s 2016 debut album Onward Desolation and their 2018 EP Path To Ruin.

That second album created an almost relentlessly shattering and yet also wholly enthralling experience. No surprise, we leaped at the chance to premiere the band’s forthcoming third album, Myriad Woes, which we do today in advance of its March 29 release by War Anthem Records.

It’s obvious from the album’s title alone that Above Aurora‘s worldview has not brightened over the last four years, and the music is as dark and devastating as you might expect from their previous works, but they have managed to increase the scale and colossal power of the traumas they transmit, as well as providing dramatic contrasts in tone, volume, and speed, variations in style, and melodic nuances that are piercing in the midst of cataclysms. Continue reading »

THE ABSENCE: “THE ABSENCE”

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Mar 262024
 


artwork by Dan Goldsworthy

(On March 28th The Absence will release a new self-titled album via Listenable Insanity Records, and we’ve got DGR‘s extensive review of it below.)

You could argue that it’s a common enough situation that it shouldn’t warrant a raised eyebrow, but six albums in is usually not the expected timeframe for one to get the honor of being the self-titled one.

Maybe it’s just us, but there’s a lot to be said for being the ‘self-titled’ album. It usually marks a few things within a group’s history; it’s either the one with the definitive sound for the band, or the complete reinvention. Sometimes the event of the ‘self-titled’ is usually two or three albums in, when it seems a group has finally honed its craft. The self-titled album is stating to the world that this release is such and such band.

You usually don’t get the self-titled album this late unless the band have opted for the second of our two above-mentioned scenarios, wherein the group are completely reinventing themselves and taking a serious gamble. It’s a way to dodge the curse of naming your release after a phoenix or some new-born flame because that almost wills your group into breaking up soon after. Yet with The Absence‘s The Absence we’re not really facing any of those scenarios. Continue reading »

LEAVING – LIMINAL

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Mar 252024
 

(Andy Synn eases us into another week with his take on the debut album from Leaving, out now)

Webster’s Dictionary defines “liminal” as “of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition: in-between, transitional”.

Which is a pretty apt metaphor for Californian collective Leaving, whose sound exists somewhere in the strange, unresolved space between Doom and Shoegaze.

Continue reading »

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