SLOW FALL: “OBSIDIAN WAVES”

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Aug 242023
 

(Today we present DGR‘s review of the new album by the Finnish band Slow Fall, which was released a couple months ago.)

It is always toughest reviewing the straight-shooters. They have a tendency to gum up the brainworks factory when you least need them to. Most of the time it’s because those albums are generally enjoyable but you find yourself constantly stumbling about an empty maze searching for a better way to describe ‘why’ rather than just the part where the band happens to excel at pushing the buttons to unleash good brain chemicals.

While we tug at that same thread though, there is also that sensibility that some of those groups are scraping up against the glass ceiling of releasing something exceptional and you can already see the signs of it in your current subject, it just isn’t quite there yet.

The halls of those who are cramming up against that breakthrough point are increasingly packed, and it’s an area we’ve often trawled over the years as we dig through the underground. Sometimes we get lucky and get to watch a band shoot through to bigger things. As always though, it ties back into the part where you can see exactly what the band are doing at that particular moment in time. There’s no mystery to the blueprint they follow, only how well they execute it.

Finland’s Slow Fall are one such group, whose early-June release of Obsidian Waves is scraping up so hard against the pathway to greatness that you can almost hear the glass cracking. Straight-shooting as they may be, there’s always room for a little bit more keyboard-inflected melodeath in the world. Continue reading »

MASSEN – GENTLE BRUTALITY

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Aug 222023
 

(Andy Synn continues his long-standing love-affair with Massen and their upcoming new album)

As much as I enjoy dissonance and discordance in my music, it remains true – even at the most extreme end(s) of the spectrum – that melody often plays the most important role in an artist’s output.

And why shouldn’t it? After all, melody is one of the prime (and one of the most primal) ways in which we communicate an emotion. Melody isn’t just about catchy hooks, it’s about telling a story.

But, perhaps just as importantly, melody can also tell you a lot about a band’s history as well – where they come from, how they became who they are – and explains so much about why, for example, Melodeath bands from Finland or Black Metal bands from Sweden sound different from their compatriots from other countries.

It should be no surprise then that, beneath their fiery mix of furious Melodic Death Metal, folk-infused Black Metal, and potent protest Punk, melody plays a key role in the sound of Gentle Brutality, the new album from Berlin-by-way-of-Belarus band Massen.

Continue reading »

GRAND CADAVER: “DEITIES OF DEATHLIKE SLEEP”

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Aug 222023
 

(Our man DGR takes on the new album by the Swedish death metal group Grand Cadaver in the following extensive review, just a few days before the record’s August 25 release by Majestic Mountain Records.)

Grand Cadaver are one of a large handful of throwback Swede-death metal projects that popped up over the last couple years. The stars must’ve aligned just right for the combination of the ‘thirty-year nostalgia cycle’, the trapped-at-home anxiousness of much of the pandemic, and the general creative explosion that seems to have emerged from a lot of people determined not to let Bloodbath have all the fun over the past few years, that we’ve wound up with quite the resurgence of that particular style.

You can always argue that it never stopped, and like much of heavy metal, there is never going to be any one style that actually fully ‘stops’. Given the genre’s obsession with corpses, murder, and the shambling dead therein, it would make sense that it would also continue to lurch along in the underground while the spotlight focuses on other trends.

The recent uptick of such bands, however, also includes groups of seasoned musicians who’ve largely made a career out of other styles of music coming back around to what they grew up with and cut their teeth on, which is largely why it seems like lately you’ve been able to see bands with incredible resumes to their varying parts. Grand Cadaver are one of those,  and they’ve kept pretty busy since launching in 2020, having issued one album and an EP up until now, and now this year we’re being treated to the group’s second full-length, Deities Of Deathlike Sleep. Continue reading »

WEREWOLVES: “MY ENEMIES LOOK AND SOUND LIKE ME”

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Aug 212023
 

(In the review below, DGR explains at length why he has had so much dumb fun with the latest Werewolves album, which Prosthetic Records released earlier this month.)

Credit where credit is due: Werewolves know exactly what they’re doing in their year-over year churn to see just how much the metal community is willing to let them get away with.

They continue their hot streak of fantastic album titles with their newest release entitled My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me, and when you open one of your videos with a set of knuckles being literally dragged across the ground, the ability to plead the fifth on the accusation of having fun with just how dumb they make their music flies right out the window. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ASAGRAUM, MYCORRHIZAE, SKØV, FELONIE

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Aug 202023
 

Pro tip: When you know the wind is shifting and it’s going to blow a mass of wildfire smoke into your area overnight, remember to close the windows in your bedroom so you don’t wake up with watering eyes and clogged lungs.

Of course I forgot to do that. To compound the idiocy I still went outside on my deck today for the usual morning coffee… and cigarettes… while watching a rising sun turned the color of Hell.

I suppose there’s a fitting synchronicity in listening to black metal while feeling nasty and thinking about Hell. I’m obviously trying to find the silver lining… or at least a lining that looks like fire and ash.

ASAGRAUM (Netherlands)

Of course, given the conditions described above, it felt completely natural to begin today’s column with a song called “Impure Fire“. The choice seemed even more natural based on the heated and harrowing nature of the music. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GREAT FALLS, THE KEENING, DIKASTERION, COPROLITH

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 192023
 

Well, no unforeseeable calamities befell me or our indomitable site in the last 24 hours, and so I’ve probably set a record for us today with the fourth roundup of new music in a row. If you include tomorrow’s Shades of Black column (barring a calamity), that will be five in a row.

The incredible thing is that even with so many daily installments, one after the other, there’s still a big pile of worthy new metal I haven’t managed to feature, and in that respect there’s nothing particularly unusual about the last week. Every week, the flood just keeps surging.

GREAT FALLS (U.S.)

I fibbed a little. Not everything in today’s collection surfaced during the last week. These first two songs, “Trap Feeding” and “Old Words Worn Thin“, are a tad older than that. They’re both from a new album by this devastating Seattle crew that will be out on September 15th through Neurot Recordings. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THE AMENTA, HARM’S WAY, VIOLENT LIFE VIOLENT DEATH, NO DIVINITY, GRUZJA, INTO THE DEEP, INCANTATION

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 172023
 

Oh look! Another mid-week roundup of new music, and it’s even more voluminous than the one I managed yesterday.

To give you a bit of a roadmap to what’s ahead, I’m starting with a perennial NCS favorite from Australia, then moving into an absolutely devastating block of U.S. metallic hardcore, then veering off in all sorts of other different directions.

THE AMENTA (Australia)

The Amenta decided to record a bunch of cover songs by a very eclectic group of bands, ranging from the black metal of Nazxul and Lord Kaos to Alice In Chains, Diamanda Galas, Killing Joke, Wolf Eyes, Halo, and… wait for it… My Dying Bride.

As if the prospect of these covers wouldn’t be titillating enough on their own to pique our interest (because we know a band like The Amenta aren’t going to play it straight with any of those songs), the 40-minute “EP” that includes the covers also presents a new original song, which is the subject of a video that debuted yesterday. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, PRIMORDIAL, PERMADEATH

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Aug 162023
 

Happy Hump Day. To help you celebrate the crest of the week before we all fall down the other side, here’s a very short but pretty damned sweet roundup — just three brand new songs, but one of them is long.

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM (U.S.)

To begin, here’s “Twin Mouthed Spring“, a breathtaking new track from a new EP by WITTR named Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge. Continue reading »

CUNABULA – THE WEIGHT OF SLEEP

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Aug 152023
 

(Andy Synn would like to draw your attention to the debut album from Lithuania’s Cunabula)

Common wisdom would tell you never to judge a book by its cover.

And while that’s true, I can’t begin to tell you the number of times an eye-catching album cover – such as the gorgeous one which adorns The Weight of Sleep – has drawn my attention and acted as the catalyst for me to check out (and subsequently review) a band’s new record.

Of course, it’s important that the band in question have the music and songs to back it up… and Cunabula definitely do.

Continue reading »

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