WOLFHEART: “KING OF THE NORTH”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 292022
 

(We present DGR‘s extensive review of the latest album by Finland’s Wolfheart, out now on Napalm Records.)

Right before Tuomas Saukkonen launched Wolfheart way back in 2013 as his only musical endeavor he had his musical tendrils spread pretty wide across a collective of projects. Over time he had become quite prolific, and each of those projects started to blur together save for one defining trait of each that was often the one identifiable thing that still made it that separate project.

Wolfheart‘s launch felt like an acknowledgement of that, coming soon after the release of the then-final Before The Dawn album Rise Of The Phoenix – and what a wild world that’s become with the recent release of the song “Downhearted” on that end – which in a lot of ways felt like a proto-blueprint for what Wolfheart would eventually become.

Even though Wolfheart began under auspices of being bitter cold and doomier flavored melodeath – which has been the core of many of Tuomas‘ projects – it didn’t take long before the high-energy blastbeat drumming and energetic aggression of the band became its trademarks; Wolfheart morphed into a band that was more often than not bathed in fire. The group’s final release with Spinefarm Records, Tyhjyys in 2017, contained two songs named “World On Fire” and “Call Of The Winter” for instance, if you’re hunting for the sort of dynamic that has come to define this group. Continue reading »

ACID WITCH: “ROT AMONG US”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 282022
 

(Detroit’s Acid Witch have a new album headed our way (of course the release day is on Halloween), and in the following review Wil Cifer shares his thoughts about it.)

This morning, I took a break from checking out the updates as to when Hurricane Ian will be coming to rock my neighborhood like the Scorpions, and found the new Acid Witch in my in-box. The anxiety left me when I pressed play. While Ian might rain on my Halloween parade going into the first weekend in October, these guys kept my spirits up.

The bar is set high since these guys are one of my favorite bands. Dressing death metal up like a Spirit Halloween Store on LSD is a beautiful thing that speaks to my soul on every level. The first track is spooky intro with just enough metal to foreshadow what is to come. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: DE PROFUNDIS / GODEATER / LIVE BURIAL

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 272022
 

(Andy Synn delivers a Death Metal-centric edition of The Best of British)

The UK Death Metal scene is a fertile place, no doubt about it.

Of course, such a bountiful harvest does sometimes make it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff (here’s a little bit of advice – stringing together a few generic grooves and mediocre, mid-paced blastbeats does not make you “the next Bolt Thrower”) but that’s just the price you pay for living in such interesting times.

One thing that separates these bands from the rest of the pack – in my opinion – is that they don’t play it safe. Sure, they’re standing on the shoulders of giants (aren’t we all?) but they’re taking risks – some big, some small – and pushing themselves in an attempt to climb even higher, demonstrating a level of ambition that, honestly, I wish more bands had instead of just settling for being just another fish in an increasingly over-crowded pond.

Continue reading »

OMOPHAGIA: “REBIRTH IN BLACK”

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Sep 272022
 

(On September 16th Unique Leader Records released a new album by the Swiss death metal band Omophagia, and DGR takes a deep dive into it in the following review.)

The day that Omophagia put out an album where the first song isn’t called “Intro” is going to feel like a period of mourning isn’t it? Other than a clockwork two-to-three-year release schedule, there are fewer long-standing patterns out there that one can rely on quite like a band being four albums in and the first song still being called “Intro”. One more album and Omophagia will be able to release an “Intro” song EP.

It is good to see this crew still going though, as the Switzerland-based bruisers are one of the more severely underrated tech-death bands out there. Perhaps due to the unassuming nature of the band or just a general sense of how consistently ‘good’ they have remained throughout their three releases up to their latest one, Rebirth In Black, it seems like Omophagia constantly get the undersell.

What you can say about Omophagia is that despite the appearance of five dudes just making complicated death metal imagery, every one of their releases has sounded different from the one before it. You’ll note the natural evolution in song-writing and just how much Omophagia like a good jackhammer-groove, but that also comes not so much with a move forward but a complete leap somewhere else on the musical explosion map, just to keep things different on the fringes. Rebirth In Black continues that trend. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VOIDOATH — “ASCENSION BEYOND KOKYTUS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Sep 262022
 

Some fans of extreme music are also fans of interesting album concepts and well-written lyrics, perhaps because such things are so few and far between in the great and continuing flood of new releases, like finding a scattering of diamonds in your sock drawer. Other fans could really care less about that, focusing instead on the music and the vocals (where the words are rarely decipherable anyway). But today we’re going to begin with concept and words, and perhaps you’ll soon understand why.

The inspiration for Ascension Beyond Kokytus, the debut album by the Costa Rican band VoidOath, was deeply rooted in the lore created by John W. Campbell Jr. through his 1938 science fiction novella Who goes there? and the novel-length version of that story, Frozen Hell, which was discovered and published after Campbell‘s death, as well as the 1982 film The Thing, John Carpenter’s classic adaptation/remake of the Campbell story. Continue reading »

MÆNTRA: “KUNDALINI RISING”

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Sep 262022
 

(As you’ll see in DGR‘s review below, Mæntra‘s debut album has been perched on his shoulders for a long time, and while it might be easier at this point just to dispense with a write-up, the album wouldn’t allow that.)

I feel that every year I must commend my fellow writers around the hovel that is the NCS office space for having a sense of when to just cut things off and accept that you won’t be able to get around to it in time. It takes a strength of character that, frankly, I just don’t have.

Every year there will be two or three albums that I feel like I have to write about, even as the review backlog grows larger and larger with new discoveries and bigger releases. These releases rest on my shoulders for what seems like forever until I either find the time or finally, shoulders slumped in defeat, admit that yes, I too will not get around to something and the time to shit or get off the pot has long since passed.

Hell, I still occasionally toy with the idea of reviewing a release that came out in January of last year now that I’ve found an easy-to-listen-to copy of it. On the opposite end though, goddamn does it feel good to finally free yourself of the need to speak of a release, when you can find that gap to do so and let the world be damned if they have anything to say about it. Continue reading »

MOTHER OF GRAVES: “WHERE THE SHADOWS ADORN”

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Sep 232022
 

(On October 14th Wise Blood Records will release the debut album of Indianapolis-based Mother of Graves, an album mastered by Dan Swanö and with cover art by Paolo Girardi, and below you’ll find Todd Manning‘s review of this new opus.)

Mother of Graves has picked the perfect time to drop their debut full-length, Where the Shadows Adorn. First of all, anyone who heard their excellent EP, In Somber Dreams, has been dying to get their hands on more material from this great band. In addition, there is something about this particular brand of death/doom that just seems to herald the changing of the seasons. The music feels autumnal, or even winter-ish. Like black metal, this type of forlorn music feels connected to the seasons. Continue reading »

CONCERT REVIEW: HEILUNG LIVE IN SEATTLE, SEPT. 20, 2022

 Concert Reviews  14 Responses »
Sep 222022
 

 

(Our editor Islander [that would be me] wrote the following concert review and took all the photos that accompany it.)

The literature of anthropological evolution (in which I’m a dabbler rather than an expert) makes a convincing case that much of our behavior is rooted in instincts that evolved over a vast span of time, instincts geared toward the survival of the species. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty clear that in the “modern age” those instincts no longer function very well as instruments of preservation and advancement. Instead, they lead to behavior that’s just plain dumb, or worse yet self-destructive, or still worse yet, dangerous to the survival of the species as a whole.

Unlike almost all other creatures on the planet, our big sophisticated brains give us the ability to override instinct for the better. Sometimes we actually behave in genuinely altruistic ways. Sometimes we’re able to extricate ourselves from dangerous predicaments through the exercise of reason when instinct alone would fail. We just don’t do any of that as often as we should, and there’s a case to be made that time is running out.

These thoughts bubbled to the surface as I reflected on the performance of Heilung I was lucky enough to witness in Seattle on the night of September 20th. On the one hand, the intense primal attraction of the show was a vivid reminder that “primitive man” still dwells within us. On the other hand, it was a testament to the willed creativity of which we’re capable, and the capacity to create beauty and magic. Continue reading »

GAEREA – MIRAGE

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Sep 212022
 

(Andy Synn takes a look behind the mask with Gaerea‘s new album, Mirage, out on Friday)

What’s in a name, anyway?

Well, according to some people… not a lot. And according to others… a great deal. Especially when it comes to genres.

Case in point, there are some people – by no means a majority, I should point out right away, though often the loudest and/or most obnoxious – who would balk at the very suggestion that Gaerea are a “true” (or “trve”) Black Metal band due to the fact that their sound is too “polished”, their visual aesthetic too “clean”, and so on.

And yet, for every one of them (I think of them as the Black Metal equivalent of the Amish – zealously convinced that a certain time period was the only “righteous” one, and that any progress beyond that should be shunned) there’s at least a dozen more for whom the very idea of questioning the band’s right to “belong” to the genre (of which they are so clearly and obviously a part) is patently ridiculous.

But the thing is… while much digital ink (and the occasional bit of non-digital blood) has been spilled over this argument, and many like it over the years… it’s obvious that Gaerea themselves don’t really care what you call them. They know who they are. And it’s the music, and not the labels which others put on it, which defines them.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE LOOM OF TIME — “GRAND FALSE KARASS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Sep 202022
 

Many much-beloved metal albums, both very old and much newer, follow a straight and narrow path, charting a consistent stylistic course and staying in the lane, without much interest shown in the openings that lead off elsewhere into the thorny brambles and dark woods on either side. They work because the bands are so good at what they chose to do, and make their trails wander just enough to keep the eyes and ears of listeners alert.

On the other hand, some bands only seem to have eyes for the paths that twist and turn, the more tangled and unpredictable the better, and they relish the chance to dart off into side-openings whenever the opportunity presents itself. Some of those bands get lost, and lose listeners along the way, but others succeed in making their less-traveled paths more exciting than the straight and narrow.

The Loom of Time‘s new album Grand False Karass is certainly a vivid example of the latter, and an even more surprising one in light of the bamboozling (and dangerous) new adventures it offers by comparison to the band’s debut. Continue reading »

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