SHORT BUT SWEET: VIRULENT GENESIS — “INTRODUCTION TO MISRULE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 262023
 

(Not long ago DGR stumbled across the debut EP of Wyoming-based Virulent Genesis, which was released earlier this month, and it struck a nerve, leading to the review you’ll find below.)

Wyoming’s Virulent Genesis arriveD to us by way of AN internet spelunking trip, part of a collection of ‘oh, that looks interesting’ captured in the great maw that is the review backlog. We could wish to provide a much better origin story, like them crashing into our burnt-out shell of an office by way of meteor, or somehow them fixing the goddamned elevator and finding their way into the lobby, but that isn’t the case.

Sometimes, the stars align just right and you get a wild hair to write about an upstart death metal group based out of Wyoming. That’s the case here with Virulent Genesis‘ first release Introduction To Misrule. Continue reading »

TEITAN – IN OCULUS ABYSS

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May 252023
 

(Come join Andy Synn as he gazes deep into the oculus abyss, set for release tomorrow)

Ever since I first heard Teitan‘s excellent 2021 EP, Vákuum (which you can read a little more about here), I’ve been looking forward to hearing what they would come up with next.

And while it seems like it’s been a long time coming – even though it’s really not – I can attest that the wait was more than worth it.

Continue reading »

TERRANOCT: “ICON OF RUIN”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 252023
 

(Terranoct is a death metal metal band based out of Akron, Ohio, and what you’ll find below is DGR‘s review of their debut album, which is out now.)

Traveling with Ohio’s Terranoct through their first full length release Icon Of Ruin is an interesting journey, as it comprises not only new material that the band have written for the album but also collects the singles that the group have put out since becoming their current form in 2016.

The songs – mostly released in 2021 ’til now, save for one in 2017 and minus one Decapitated cover – add to an incredibly dense album that weighs out to about an hour and three minutes. Terranoct’s Icon Of Ruin has a lot of ideas swirling within it and seemingly leaves nothing behind, and with that, not only tells the tale of the band as a whole but also feels like a series of snapshots throughout an entire death metal scene, as influences grow and wane, ideas enter and leave, and a band themselves mature and mutate into the form they are now. Continue reading »

PRONOSTIC: “CHAOTIC UPHEAVAL”

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May 252023
 

(Professor D. Grover the XIIIth returns to our site with the following enthusiastic review of the second album by Montreal-based Pronostic, which was released in mid-May.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. The fretless bass holds an impressive position in the history of death metal, especially as it pertains to death metal’s more technical sub-branch. Present at the subgenre’s inception thanks to legends like Steve DiGiorgio and Sean Malone, the fretless bass has become especially popular with the current popularity of tech death, thanks to modern practitioners like Dominic “Forest” LaPointe, JP Thesseling, Linus Klausenitzer, and Hugo Doyon-Karout. LaPointe probably set the high water mark for absolute fretless mastery on the most recent First Fragment album, a performance that may never be surpassed.

If this seems like an odd way to start off a review, I say all of this because Pronostic‘s new bassist, Xavier Sperdouklis (also of the excellent Killitorous) has definitely added himself to the conversation on this new Pronostic record Chaotic Upheaval. Continue reading »

NEXORUM: “TONGUE OF THORNS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 232023
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the second album by Norway’s Nexorum, just released late last week by Non Serviam Records.)

If you’d asked how long ago it had been since the last time we dove into Nexorum‘s black metal world with their first album Death Unchained, the knee-jerk response would’ve been not that long ago. It couldn’t have been right? Yet a gentle tap on the shoulder and much belly-aching later we’re reminded that the time compression of the past few years has struck once again. It has in fact been three years since we stumbled into the world of Nexorum (alongside Centinex‘s 2020 release at the time as well) for their debut album, Hell.

Any band that has put a out a release through the past few years has been put through the fucking wringer. Every release since then has felt like a soft restart for those groups whether they want it to be or not. Any group would be forgiven for choosing to hang it up after dealing with the shape of the world and its touring situation since then, so its a glorious thing to see Nexorum returning with a follow-up album, one that maintains the hellfire and ferocity of that first full-length while stretching their wings just a little bit further in Tongue Of Thorns.

Tongue Of Thorns was released on May 19th of this year – an eternity ago, we know – and further refines upon its older sibling while adding about five more minutes of run time to the overall length, whilst also managing to trim the actual song numbers down by one. Bigger songs, angrier guitars, and the same throat-scarring vocal work that made the debut an impressive listen, why would you not want to leap in head-first again? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DRATNA — “FOMÓRAIGH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 222023
 

In past years we’ve written extensively about the music of the Belfast-based solo black metal project Dratna, following their course across four EPs and a 2022 debut album (Fear Gorta & Tales of the Undead) since the first release in 2018. It has been a remarkable excursion, and one that has fueled increasingly high expectations for each new release.

We didn’t expect another Dratna album so soon, but that is what we have — a new full-length named Fom​óraigh that will be released on May 26th by the distinctive NY label Fiadh Productions. Maybe expectations were a bit tempered given the relative speed of this follow-up, but that trepidation only made the new record even more astonishing to hear.

In its inspirations and themes the new album draws on Irish mythology and the landscape of The Mourne Mountians. In its music, to use the rudest form of summing up, it interweaves atmospheric and raw black metal with folk music performed on a wide array of instruments, rich symphonic overlays, and hints of doom. It unfolds like a head-spinning, eye-popping musical pageant, one that seems to have one foot in an age lost to the millennia and another in the hear-and-now. Continue reading »

THE OCEAN: “HOLOCENE”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 222023
 

(On Friday of last week Pelagic Records released a new album by The Ocean. DGR has thoughts about it. Many thoughts about it. Most of them are included in the review below, which unfolds as a journey through more than a decade of time.)

May 10th, 2010 – Walking through the park nearby my house, attempting to distract myself from an ongoing period where the only thing in life that isn’t going sideways is work. In an attempt to expand my musical horizons and thanks to MetalSucks posting about them consistently, I have picked up on The Ocean and their album Heliocentric. It has been the soundtrack to multiple walks like this in an attempt to understand why it seems to appeal to so many people, which is difficult to explain to a guy whose previous musical experience has been either in the -core scene or very Euro-centric melodeath until one day “Swallowed By The Earth” hits just right and we’re off to the races.

November 9th, 2010 – Anthropocentric has been released as part of the group’s continual pattern of pairing albums together. In the six-month gap the band have become an obsession and I wind up reviewing the album for The Number Of The Blog – the first website I’ve written for and at this point was basically co-editor. I enjoy it and its more up-front aggression and metallic atmospheres than Heliocentric, but the pairing etches itself into my brain. Continue reading »

A CONSTANT KNOWLEDGE OF DEATH – DISSECTING A ONE-WINGED BIRD

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 222023
 

(Andy Synn dissects the excellent new album from A Constant Knowledge of Death, out this Friday)

There are several cultures in the world who have a similar tradition, wherein their younger members are given a chance to go out and explore the world, to experience different cultures and ways of living, before they have to settle down.

And I can’t help but think that Massachusetts metallers A Constant Knowledge of Death have been on a similar journey over the course of their career so far, having experimented with (in no particular order) poignant Post-Hardcore, poppy Prog-Rock, moody Post-Metal, subtly blackened Sludge, and electronica-inflected dissonance as the years have gone by.

But while the band’s progressive pilgrimage from one genre to the next has certainly produced some fascinating creative results, it was clear (or, at least, it’s clear in hindsight) that they were always searching for something… a sound of their own, and a place to call home… that was always just out of reach.

Which is why I’m so happy to be able to say that on Dissecting a One-Winged Bird it feels like the group have finally, and fully, found themselves.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DUSK CULT, BLACK SORCERY, GRÅANDE, MELTED BODIES

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 212023
 

This Sunday’s tour through the black arts is shorter than usual. Unexpected conflicts have arisen in my day. The confliction in the music was planned.

DUSK CULT (Australia)

Behold, our revelation statement
Bow down, before a dying sun
Yielding, to midnight manifesto
We’ve only just begun

Those words are some of the lyrics to “Black Cloud Worship“, a new song that this Australian band presented two days ago through a dramatic video wherein revelations occur on a rocky, wave-drenched shoreline. I had some idea what to expect from this duo (who are members of Be’lakor and Rainshadow), based on the manifold strengths of their 2021 debut album Embrace the Lunar Age, but the music still left my heart pounding hard. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: KHANATE, KATAKLYSM, TEMPLE OF DREAD, BLACKBRAID, HALFLIGHTED, ANIMA HERETICAE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 202023
 


Khanate

I began this morning like I’ve begun every morning since the start of the pandemic: sitting on the deck of my home in the forest drinking a triple-espresso, smoking cigarettes, and reading the local, national, and international news on my phone.

It’s not something I can recommend in good conscience. Smoking is bad for you and the news is almost invariably depressing. But today the birds around me were in full song and the news included a story about a woman who had a “loud and full body orgasm” during the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony as performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The article where I learned about this included a link to a list of “The 10 Best Orgasm Symphonies”, compiled by British music journalist Norman Lebrecht in celebration of the woman’s scream. The article also quoted opera soprano Renée Fleming: “Let’s not forget that the word ‘climax’ is a common musical term. It has to do with musical tension and its release.”

With this in mind, I started making my way through my gigantic list of new songs and videos from the past week or two, listening for climaxes. If you get one while listening to what follows, just keep that to yourself. (Joking of course — I want to hear all about it!) Continue reading »

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