Album Reviews Archives - Page 79 of 545

MODERN WITCHCRAFT – MODERN WITCHCRAFT

Feb 052024

(Andy Synn finds himself enchanted by the debut release from Ohio’s Modern Witchcraft)

As I’ve mentioned several times, it’s difficult (read: impossible) for us to keep up with every new band that comes out and every new release they come out with.

Heck, it’s not exactly easy, either, keeping track of all the bands we already know about, especially when they decide to change their names – which is the case with Modern Witchcraft.

Previously known as Close the Hatch (whose 2020 album, also entitled Modern Witchcraft, was a low-key favourite of mine that year) I had pretty much given up hope of ever hearing anything from these guys again until, out of the blue, I stumbled across the video for “Corpse Painter” a little over a week ago.

Some part of me immediately recognised that particular mix of moody percussion, brooding bass, and reverberating guitars… and when those instantly identifiable vocals kicked in I knew exactly who this must be, regardless of what they were calling themselves now.

And I also knew, as soon as the song finished, that I’d be writing about this record as soon as I could.

SHADES OF BLACK: CRIMSON TWILIGHT, ANTEINFIERNO

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK No Responses »

Feb 042024

Ash

Sometimes we must confront grim tasks head-on and grapple with them, rather than shying away. And so I forced myself to calculate how much time has passed since the last time I did one of these columns. The answer is, six weeks ago, the day before Christmas.

Countless creatures making up thousands of species are born, live, and die within a six-week span. Hell, males among the American sand-burrowing mayflies live less than one hour after reaching adulthood, and females have just five minutes to breed before they die. Let’s have a moment of silence for them, please.

Thank you.

Even thinking about what has happened to me over the last six weeks to produce such a void in this Sunday column is a grim contemplation. Knowing what I have ahead of me next weekend, there will likely be another void next Sunday. But for now let’s contemplate more pleasurable grimness. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Feb 022024

(Andy Synn has a few words to share about four albums from last month you may have overlooked)

Here we are… one month into the new year… and we’ve already fallen behind.

Of course, that’s nothing new. As I’ve said before (several times, in fact) it’s impossible for any site, let alone any individual writer, to keep up with everything that’s released week after week (which is one reason I don’t trust anyone who claims that they’ve somehow listened to literally hundreds of albums every month – they may have heard them, but I doubt they really listened to them the way they deserve), so even at this early stage it’s no surprise that there’s so many artists and albums we haven’t been able to write about.

To be quite honest though, this is less and less of an issues these days – simply by accepting the fact that there’s always going to be stuff we’re not going to be able to cover, while also acknowledging that we’re definitely going to be featuring some stuff here that other places, and other people, won’t cover, we’ve gotten over our fear of missing out and embraced the idea that our value comes not from covering everything but from providing an interesting and distinct perspective of our own on what we do write about.

So, with that in mind, here’s four artists/albums from January – some of which you may already have been aware of, some of which you may not – that we (or, at least, I) felt compelled to pen a few extra words about so that they didn’t get overlooked following what was, after all, a very packed month of new releases!

OBSCURITIES – VOLUME I: WHAT DID WE (ALMOST) MISS LAST YEAR?

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Feb 012024

(Daniel Barkasi, an NCS writer from long ago, has returned here with the first installment in a planned monthly column. In this inaugural edition he recommends 10 albums released last year that deserve a closer look.)

Welcome NCS readers to my first, brand new column of music that’s been bouncing around in my often deranged cranium. I feel vigorous.

What we’re going to be doing here is highlighting releases that have – at least, according to my spidey senses – slipped under the radar and haven’t gotten much attention or buzz. We’ll cover an undetermined number of these unsung heroes monthly. Most of these will be relatively current and put out within the last few months, but I also don’t want to be that rigid all the time, so we’ll do so liberally and make sure to add a release date for each entry.

For this inaugural piece, I’m going to highlight a few albums from 2023 that were unsung gems that deserve a little love, in no particular order. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, JANUARY 2024

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Jan 312024

(Gonzo returns with another end-of-month roundup of recommended releases, this time shining a light on albums and EPs released by six bands in January.)

January is such a bullshit month.

It’s cold as all fuck, everyone’s burned out – financially, emotionally, professionally – and shows/tours are few and far between. To pile it on, it’s also customarily a terrible month for new music. I wasn’t expecting to unearth much during my monthly search of metal’s grimy underbelly to include in this feature.

Lo and behold, I was dead fucking wrong. 2024 has already seen so many good releases in just over three weeks that I actually had to figure out what not to include here. (Coincidentally, three of the releases are from France, so make of that what you will.)

Regardless of geography, the sharp rise in early-year quality in 2024 is making me rethink old paradigms. Is the January curse on its way out? Am I reading too much into this? Is reality a lie? Are the machines reading my thoughts? Fuck. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HASTURIAN VIGIL — “UNVEILING THE BRAC’THAL”

Album Reviews, Premieres 1 Response »

Jan 312024

Possibly drawing upon a reference in the Ambrose Bierce short story “Haïta the Shepherd”, and/or stories in Robert Chambers‘ collection The Yellow Sign, H.P. Lovecraft added Hastur the Unspeakable to his pantheon of the Great Old Ones in his tale “The Whisperer in Darkness”.

Spawn of Yog-Sothoth, the half-brother of Cthulhu, and possibly the Magnum Innominandum, Hastur was a vast monstrosity of hideous power drawn from nameless aeons and inconceivable dimensions. And that terrible thing seems to have been an inspiration for the Irish musical duo who chose for themselves the name Hasturian Vigil.

However, these two — multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Cxaathesz and drummer Shygthoth — were not content to set their music solely within Lovecraftian spheres. For their debut album Unveiling the Brac’thal they created a mythos of their own, Yith-Melle, inspired not only by Lovecraft but also by Machen, Lord Dunsany, and Yeats, all the better to “embrace their fascination for cosmic dread, deranged pantheons, and unspeakable curses”.

So says the materials accompanying the album which we have received from the publicist for Invictus Productions, which will release Unveiling the Brac’thal on February 2nd. We also have these prefatory words from Hasturian Vigil: Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: THE INFERNAL SEA / MOUNTAIN CALLER / YERSIN

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Jan 302024

(Andy Synn presents another terrific triptych of recent releases from the UK)

We’re only a month into the new year and the UK contingent has already put out several strong releases (including a couple that I’m holding on to for the next edition of this particular series).

All signs, therefore, indicate that this is going to be another healthy year for my home-grown scene, so let’s start as we mean to go on, shall we, with three more examples of “The Best of British”!

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: CAVE SERMON, SALQIU

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Jan 272024

After three weeks away from home working my day job I’m finally back. It was a stressful and often bizarre experience, made worse by the absence of my spouse and cats, and worse still because I had no time to listen to music, much less write about it.

That may sound weird. There’s always time to listen to music, isn’t there? In my case, it just didn’t fit what I was doing, too much of a distraction instead of a companion. Especially when it comes to metal, my brain’s not wired to combine even less raucous variants of music with trying to concentrate hard on something else. So I was forced to take a very long hiatus, the longest one in the 14+ years I’ve spent in devotion to NCS.

Andy and DGR stepped up and kept the site from going dark, and a few other writers continued sending things in too. But we’ve still got a backlog of un-published material to bring to the surface, mainly a big slug of interviews from Comrade Aleks. Other backlogs will never be fixed. Continue reading »

SPECTRAL VOICE: “SPARAGMOS”

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Jan 252024

(We present the following review by Todd Manning of the sophomore album by Colorado-based Spectral Voice)

Spectral Voice is composed of three-quarters of the members of Blood Incantation and is equally as formidable a death metal unit.

But if Blood Incantation have their vision firmly fixed on the stars above, Spectral Voice lurks in the subterranean shadows.

If their 2017 debut Eroded Corridors of Unbeing didn’t place them at the pinnacle of the Death-Doom genre, their latest, Sparagmos, should do the trick.

Due out on February 9th courtesy of Dark Descent Records, it is certainly a shoo-in for year-end lists. Continue reading »

KNOLL – AS SPOKEN

Album Reviews No Responses »

Jan 242024

(Andy Synn reviews the new album from Knoll, out this Friday)

Riding the hype wave is a lot like surfing, when you think about it.

Sure, you look cool when you’re doing it, and as long as you stay ahead of it you’re all good, but the moment you fall behind the curve… that’s when it overtakes you and drags you down.

And while the prolific (and pretty damn impressive) output of unorthodox American noise-mongers Knoll has, so far at least, helped them ride that wave a long way from their humble beginnings – going from a practically unknown name in 2019 to one that’s been on almost everybody’s lips going into 2024 – it’s basically inevitable that, some day, maybe even some day soon, they’re going to crash out and go under.

But that day is not today.

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