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CHROME WAVES – EARTH WILL SHED ITS SKIN

Apr 202023

(Andy Synn continues our long-running relationship with Chicago’s Chrome Waves, whose new album is set for release next week)

It’s crazy, when you think about it, just how long we’ve been writing about Chrome Waves, publishing our very first post about the group – then made up of The Atlas Moth‘s Stavros Giannopolous, ex-Nachtmystium guitarist Jeff Wilson, and former The Gates of Slumber drummer Bob Fouts (RIP) – in December 2011.

And while things have certainly changed quite a bit since then – the group essentially began all over again in 2018, with Wilson and Amiensus vocalist/guitarist James Benson forming the new core of the band’s ever-evolving line-up, which now also features bassist Zion Meager and drummer Garry Naples – we’ve continued to follow their career with both fascination and appreciation aplenty over the years.

But what’s particularly fascinating about their upcoming fourth album, Earth Will Shed Its Skin, is the way in which it attempts to weave the two most distinctive aspects of the band’s sound – the cathartic “Post-Black Metal” side that appeals to fans of Tombs, Deafheaven, and the like, and the shoegaze-y Alt-Rock side that recalls the best of acts like Hum and Catherine Wheel – into a single, coherent whole.

Does it succeed? Or does it shatter under the weight of everything it’s trying to achieve? Let’s find out!

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAEDEOUS — “MALUM SUPPLICIUM”

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Apr 202023

Our first in-depth exposure to the music of the Portuguese symphonic black metal band Caedeous was last year, when we premiered their third album, Obscurus Perpetua. When we did that, we advised listeners “to take your seats and get a firm grip on something solid before embarking on this journey”, because we found the album to be “a dazzling, diabolical, and disorienting trip through the imperiums of Hell”:

“The music is elaborate and unpredictable, theatrical and bombastic, sometimes breathtaking in its splendor but always as scary as your worst nightmares. Fascinating music, to be sure, but also demented and intensely unnerving.”

And now we’re re-connecting with Caedeous just one year later because they’ve made a new album, and once again we’re hosting its full streaming premiere. The name of the new one is Malum Supplicium. Like its two predecessors, it’s a concept album, one that “thematically tells horror stories inspired by Lovecraft, Barker and Alighierie‘s works — the eternal struggle between good and evil, angels and demons, heaven and hell”. Continue reading »

CISZA – SHE YEARNS FOR OTHER WORLDS

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Apr 192023

(Andy Synn breaks his silence on the first full-length album from Poland’s Cisza)

Ok, I promise… this is going to be the last of the Black Metal oddities that I write about for a while.

Probably. Maybe. Almost certainly.

That being said, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by without writing about Cisza‘s intriguing debut album.

After all, while it may not be as overtly “odd” as most of the releases I’ve covered recently it is, however, a record which certain people are more likely to deny actually is Black Metal, due to the fact that its blend of echoing tremolo melodies and rigid rhythmic patterns errs closer towards the punchy, Post-Black approach of bands like Agrypnie, Downfall of Gaia, and Harakiri for the Sky, than it does anything remotely “trve” or “kvlt”.

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: FIAT NOX — “OPIUM TO INSIDIOUS SLUMBER II”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 1 Response »

Apr 172023

In 2021 we had the honor of premiering In Contemptuous Defiance, a new EP by the German black metal band Fiat Nox, which followed their 2021 debut album The Archive of Nightmares. In an accompanying review we wrote that the EP “further elevates the place of Fiat Nox as a band capable of creating marvelously dynamic and multi-faceted music that gets the blood racing with its muscular, hard-charging aggression but also creates wholly enthralling atmosphere through its emotionally powerful melodies”. In Contemptuous Defiance was also home to a song (“Amok Hymn“) that we named to our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Allowing no grass to grow beneath their iron-shod hooves, Fiat Nox followed that EP with another one in 2022 — Demanifestation (Hymns of Destruction and Nothingness). Unfolding across three tracks and 30 minutes, it provided a bracing amalgam of blistering and blasting blackened fury, engrossing melodies, and frightening, esoteric atmosphere worthy of the record’s magnificently hellish cover art.

With their creative fires still burning hot, Fiat Nox have readied yet another EP for release later this month. Entitled Opium To Insidious Slumber, it consists of two songs, and today we’re premiering a lyric video for the second of those — “Opium To Insidious Slumber II“. Continue reading »

ALTARI – KRÖFLUELDAR

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Apr 172023

(Andy Synn bathes in the pyroclastic flow of the debut album from Iceland’s Altari)

I promise you, at some point I’ll write about something a little more… normal.

Maybe some stupid, stompy Death Metal or some chunky, chuggy Hardcore. How does that sound?

But, for whatever reason, there’s been so many brilliantly weird and wonderful albums released over the last few months – especially on the Black Metal side of things – which I’ve felt compelled to write about that you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’re in the middle of some sort of renaissance in the field of Avant-Garde extremity (and maybe we are!).

And, providing yet more evidence for this, may I present the debut album from Icelandic iconoclasts Altari.

SHADES OF BLACK: MORIBUND MANTRAS, DACCAR-TCHUV’S CAVE, PINCER CONSORTIUM, NON SERVIAM, ALTAI-SAYAN

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK 1 Response »

Apr 162023

Moribund Mantras

Humans continue sending cameras into the deepest waters on Earth and continue seeing strange creatures that live there. If those creatures have minds, they may be thinking we should mind our own goddamned business, especially the two snailfish that were physically caught in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench last September at a depth of 8.022 meters (just under five miles below sea level). Even the snailfish that were only videoed at a depth of 8,336 meters, making them the deepest fish ever captured on film, might have felt annoyed. (The film was released earlier this month, reported here.)

But the snailfish aren’t the deepest sea creatures discovered so far. There’s an octopus that’s been found at an estimated 9,800 meters below sea level in the Marianas Trench. And the deepest part of the Marianas Trench measured so far (the deepest surveyed point of all the Earth’s oceans) is 10,971 meters (6.817 miles) below the water’s surface. There’s probably life down there too — we just don’t yet have the technology to go look.

Why the hell am I sharing this info here? It’s because I’ve been thinking about the allure of oddities (for want of a better term). Life-forms found at depths once thought unsurvivable bear resemblances to creatures that dwell far closer to the surface, but their appearance has been twisted in unusual and often frightening ways as they adapted through evolution in their epochal descents. Their strange fascinations lead us to keep searching for them, and to attempt to comprehend how they have survived.

Some (but not all) of today’s music bears resemblances to more familiar forms of black and blackened metal, but it is also twisted into unusual and sometimes frightening shapes. Searching for such oddities is one of our pastimes, because the results can be fascinating. (The risk of operating in a blog where there’s no one telling you what to do is that it permits strained analogies that consume a lot of space.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: TORTURE RACK, INFERNAL CURSE, STRAHOR, MISMATCHED, SHADOWS, SCHEITAN, DRUNK MOTHERFUCKERS, FLORES Y FUEGO

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Apr 152023

I don’t know where you live. If I were some tech-savvy spook I might be able to find out, but I’m not one of those. I only know where I live. Where I live spring is valiantly trying to become sprung. Leaves and blossoms are gradually appearing on deciduous trees, some faster than others, but when the rains come again tomorrow they may regret that. A few flowers have blossomed, but not many. I hear a lot more birds at sunrise.

However, the overnight lows are still in the 30s F, the daytime highs still mired in the 50s, and the sun is either pale or obscured by clouds. Spring will have to fight harder. Mind you, I’m not complaining. The last few unbroken links of winter’s chains have made it easier to connect to the some of the music I picked for this Saturday’s recommendations. And of course, delirium and rage are not seasonal, but ever-present, as is alcohol.

TORTURE RACK (U.S.)

Death metal, foul and hulking and savage, seemed like the right way to begin. “Decrepit Funeral Home” will put you on the torture rack and a roaring monster will turn the crank until your bones groan and sinews stretch in agony. You know you deserve it. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MESMUR — “CHTHONIC”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Apr 122023

The debate over whether human beings have souls has endured for millennia and will endure for millennia more (assuming humanity survives that long). It has been a mainstay of philosophical and theological discourse, and scientists have intruded as well, with explanations rooted in the chemistry and electricity of the brain.

The debate won’t end, and not just because the hypothesis and its rejection are both un-provable at some level, but also because of the unyielding hope that some essence of us will survive the death of the body. In the midst of all the agonies that life brings our way, many people have always wondered, “Really, is this all there is?“, and with varying degrees of conviction insist, “It can’t be!”

Mesmur‘s new album Chthonic doesn’t directly address this age-old question. Thematically, it’s “a collection of paranormal horror tales” that speak “of fabled entities making contact through the veil of sleep, summoning prey to subterranean depths, or haunting a post-apocalyptic landscape” (to borrow from the PR materials).

And yet the music is so deeply stirring in its effects that it might make some people think it’s connecting with something within that has no physical existence or explanation, but so daunting that it could be understood as delivering the terrible message that nothing survives the end of breath, or that if something does survive it will find that only horror awaits. Continue reading »

OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GRAVES – SHRINES TO DAGON

Album Reviews No Responses »

Apr 122023

(Andy Synn invites you all to come worship the new album from Out of the Mouth of Graves)

There’s always been something almost inhuman… practically supernatural… about how prolific the members of this band are.

Whether it’s with Acausal Intrusion, Feral Lord, Maggot Crown, Psionic Madness, or Out of the Mouth of Graves themselves (and that’s just a handful of the projects they are, or have been, involved in) it’s hard to comprehend how the trio find sufficient time to keep pushing the boundaries year after year after year.

But Shrines to Dagon finally offers us an explanation – it’s now clear that Vølus, Turner and Moran have made some sort of unholy pact with the ruinous powers beyond this realm. How else could they do what they do?

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CAVE MOTH — “PARALYTIC LOVE”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Apr 112023

These days the phrase “catch and kill” has connotations of schemes to buy up embarrassing news about bloated political figures and then bury it. But it’s also a phrase that leaped into our heads when listening to Cave Moth‘s new EP Paralytic Love. This time it’s us that are being caught and killed. The catching employs lures of different kinds that are damned difficult to resist. The killing occurs in equally ingenious (one might also say aberrant) ways.

The whole experience, though separated into 8 tracks, comes to an abrupt end less than 8 minutes after it begins. It seems longer, like there’s some time-dilation effect happening, maybe because it’s so packed to the gills with mad, head-spinning permutations — which become the lures. The songs rush and rampage with centrifugal force, but simultaneously bamboozle the listener’s higher faculties with the whipping whirligig of genres and sounds that feed into the chaos. Continue reading »

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