DØDHEIMSGARD – BLACK MEDIUM CURRENT

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Apr 112023
 

(Andy Synn explores the new album from the shapeshifting sultans of strange, Dødheimsgard)

There’s an unfortunate tendency, as I’m sure many of you aware, among some of the more… ahem… self-consciously “Avant-Garde” members of the Metal community to try a little too hard to convince everyone how progressive, how clever, and how creative they are, rather than letting their work simply speak for itself.

Whether that’s due to a lack of confidence – or an over-abundance of it – is always up for debate, but the truth is it’s almost always better to show rather than tell, and if you’re more interested in making solipsistic statements and delivering pretentious proclamations about your own intelligence, then… well, that says a lot, doesn’t it?

Dødheimsgard, however, have always come by their weirdness honestly, and their unwillingness to conform has never come across as contrived or calculated, but simply as an organic expression of their own unique oddness.

And Black Medium Current is a sublime space oddity of a very special sort, no doubt about it, that may one day be held up as the band’s de facto magnum opus.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ZEIT — “OHNMACHT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 102023
 

Today marks the third time we’ve premiered a complete album by the German band Zeit — all three of the band’s full-lengths so far — in addition to lots of other features we’ve done for singles and videos leading up to those premieres. Obviously, we haven’t grown weary of their music. To the contrary, Zeit just keep getting better and better.

Their new album, which will be released on April 14th, is named Ohnmacht. For those of us who don’t speak their native tongue, Zeit explains that this title is a German word that “describes a state of lethargie”, “a powerlessness that results in an accepting behaviour despite the fact of being oppositional to tragic events”. In more detail, they have elaborated on the album’s concept:

A life between the chains of civilization: Stumbling from crisis to crisis, we numbly stare into the nothingness. “What now?” the mind wonders as it dances into the shadows. Frustration, anger and disgust are pushing us to the beat of forced productivity – driven by pandemic, war and climate change. The world struggles with itself and yet does not give up. Because where all is lost, there is hope and freedom. Expect nothing, fear everything. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANIACO, EASTWOOD, CHADHEL, DELYRIA, MAN AS PLAGUE, IZROD

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Apr 082023
 


Maniaco

My track record of posting new-music roundups on Bandcamp Fridays is spotty. I probably fail as often as I succeed. I know that people save up Bandcamp wish lists based on things they’ve discovered in between those Fridays, including music they’ve found through our reviews and other roundups. But those Fridays still seem like good days to spread the word about enticing new metal because lots of people are making purchase decisions right then, when Bandcamp has a moratorium on its 15% and 10% revenue grabs.

I did manage to pull together a roundup on yesterday’s Bandcamp Friday. I didn’t have much time to do it (I again blame my fucking day job), which resulted in fewer choices than I had in mind and a lot fewer words, but I hope it was better than nothing. I hope it gave those six bands a bit of a push for their forthcoming records.

Now we’re back to the in-between period. I hope some of what I picked today will wind up on new wish lists or result in immediate pick-ups. Or maybe you’ll just get pumped up listening, like I did this morning. (P.S. If you wonder why I give a damn about Bandcamp as a platform for music, scroll to the very bottom of this article.) Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANARETA — “FEAR NOT”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 072023
 


photo by Bobby Bonesy

In writing about the music of the New Orleans ensemble Anareta we feel a gnawing sense of inadequacy (more than the usual). There’s an anxious conviction that to do it true justice would require more knowledge and learned appreciation for classical music, including the beautiful interplay of instrumental voices in chamber music, than we possess. On the other hand, we do know a thing or two about extreme metal music, and that turns out to be equally relevant.

Of course, Anareta aren’t the only band who have sought to integrate compositional and instrumental traditions of Western classical music with the harshness and aggression of heavy metal in some of its more extreme forms. But many other bands in that space use orchestral synths to weave in the classical elements. Even the more subdued sounds of string sections are usually the result of programmed samples.

Anareta, on the other hand, have a more authentic approach, with a line-up that includes performers on viola (Mackenzie Hamilton), cello (Sam Hollier), and violin (Louise Neal), along with the more familiar metal instrumentation of guitar (Carey Goforth), bass guitar (Sarah Jacques), and drums (Boyanna Trayanova). And it’s not just the instrumentation that’s so multi-faceted, because three of those performers (Jacques, Neal, and Hamilton) contribute to the vocals, and they’re varied too. Continue reading »

AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KUOLEVAN RUKOUS — “DEMO 2023”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 062023
 

We don’t know much about the background of Kuolevan Rukous. The names used by the band’s three members — Unholy Necrosis, Tuliips, and Buer Enkoimesis — are not the ones they were born with. Although a German band, they chose a Finnish name for themselves, one that translates as “The Prayer of the Dead“. And apart from the track names, we don’t have any special insights into the inspirations or conceptions behind their first demo release, which will be out on April 14th.

And so, Kuolevan Rukous are a paradigm example of an obscure group whose music must speak for itself. It turns out to be a very interesting form of speech. A trio of underground labels — Vita Detestabilis, Reaping Death Records, and Grieve Records — will release this debut demo on tape, and Vita Detestabilis previews it by telling us that Kuolevan Rukous have expressed themselves “through asphyxiating dissonances, noisy atmospheres, and using death doom as a conductor for funeral black”.

Those words created intrigue around here, and the music itself proved to be intriguing, and far, far more than that. It was not a difficult decision for us to be the bearer of the demo’s premiere today. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 052023
 

(Andy Synn has four more albums to recommend from March that you, and we, may have missed)

For this month’s catch up on “Things You May Have Missed” I’ve elected to cover four bands who – in my opinion at least – don’t conform neatly to any particular genre stereotypes or fit into one specific stylistic box.

That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a heap of other, more genre-specific releases to check out last month – Death Metal fans would do well to check out the malevolent murk of Aphotic and/or the sheer brutality of Thanatophobia, whereas those of a more “blackened” persuasion should give Blaze of Sorrow and Malphas a try (the latter especially), while anyone looking for something moodier and doomier will doubtless enjoy the new Isole and Weight of Emptiness (and I may still try and find time to write a few words about the former if/when I get chance) – but I thought I’d go with a few selections that are a bit harder to pin down.

Continue reading »

DEATHGRAVE: “IT’S ONLY MIDNIGHT”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Apr 052023
 

(West Coast extremists Deathgrave will release a new album on April 14th via the Tankcrimes label, and today we present Todd Manning‘s review.)

To be a dedicated fan of old school death metal often means not seeking out surprises, but rather looking for a vibe. So when one comes across a new band which includes Greg Wilkinson, who has done time with Autopsy along with sludge masters Brainoil and Graves at Sea, one can assume that those vibes will be there in spades. Deathgrave’s latest full-length, It’s Only Midnight, certainly captures that old-school death metal atmosphere, but actually does provide some surprises along the way. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LARVAE — “ENTITLED TO DEATH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Apr 042023
 

“Oakland, California has summoned the rituals of many metal legions over the decades. Its stench is filled with dark art, morbid riffs, death and doom. There’s a scorched place in the corner of the crumbling landscape evoking evil and witchy magic where Larvae feast on the remains of those who perished.”

In the press materials, those evocative words precede the release of Larvae‘s long-awaited second album Entitled to Death, which (to quote again from the same materials) “pursues a human experience, traversing the middle realm seen thru the eyes of a defected warrior,” who is bound to a grim and hostile reality “until the final collapse in a land filled with ruin and loss… crossing over into a cosmic abyss.”

In the musical telling of this uncomfortable tale Larvae draw inspiration from such divergent  ’90s legends as Runemagick, Paradise Lost, Immolation, Bolt Thrower, Neurosis, and Dismember. How they interweave those influences might be difficult to guess, but today no guessing game is needed because we have the complete album stream for you. Continue reading »

UGLY: “AUTOGRAPH”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 042023
 

(Arizona doom/sludge quartet UGLY will release their new album Autograph via Satanik Royalty Records on May 5th, and below you’ll find Wil Cifer‘s review.)

Since the ’90s sludge has branched out from crust punk to meld the apocalyptic rumblings passed down from bands like Swans and Killing Joke. This band from Arizona carries all the foreboding of the genre’s forefathers in their sound. They know the value of atmosphere as a tool to empower the aggression of their riffs. The guitars chug with crushing vitriol. One of this album’s strengths is the use of samples to set the mood, in a manner we have not heard since the glory days of Neurosis.

The vocals of the first song are an exercise in raw larynx-scraping  They are recorded in a very dry fashion with scant use of effects. Just a crazed man screaming into a mic.

This crazed man is not alone. He is joined by Krysta Curry from Landmine Marathon, who not only shares vocal duties but also helps out with synths, samples, and additional percussion, though her vocal presence is not really felt ’til the second song, which finds an odd syncopation embracing a weird, more grandiose arrangement. Continue reading »

ROTTEN SOUND: “APOCALYPSE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 042023
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the new album by Finland’s Rotten Sound, which is out now on Season of Mist.)

The thing to keep in mind with Rotten Sound‘s newest album Apocalypse – arriving almost five years after the group’s last recorded material in the 2018 EP Suffer To Abuse and almost seven years if you want to stick strictly to full lengths in 2016’s Abuse To Suffer – is that it is the sort of grind album that starts and stops. That makes no sense, you say, every album has a beginning and end, what sort of difference does an album starting and stopping have to do with the descriptor of an album?

To refine it a bit, let’s treat Apocalypse this way: There is no build up to Apocalypse and there is no wind-down in Apocalypse, at any point, at all. You hit ‘play’ on the album’s first song and Rotten Sound are already screaming at a thousand miles an hour and every song after that does the same. The start/stop mechanism is the most perfunctory in existence. It’s a quick blast of feedback and the song is over with not a single song getting close to the two-minute mark. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries