GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, APRIL 2022

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
May 032022
 


Somali Yacht Club – photo by May Lee

(April 2022 is in the history books, and our man Gonzo follows its end with a selection of albums released during the month that brightened his days, and we hope will brighten yours.)

If only my fucking day job made it easier to listen to all the music I wanted to. Pipe dreams, man. Pipe dreams.

The past month saw me venturing out to several shows, though; Archspire in particular ripped my face off for an hour straight while grinning maniacally the whole time. Amorphis and Uada were amazing as well, and I’ve got Behemoth and Arch Enemy lined up for this coming Wednesday. (I’ll likely be at that show by the time you read this column.)

All that being said, none of the bands I cover here are anything I saw live recently, but god damn does it feel good to be getting back into my pre-pandemic cadence of live music again.

As usual, here’s a smattering of new shit I found worthy of writing about this month. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): VITAL SPIRIT — “STILL AS THE NIGHT, COLD AS THE WIND”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
May 022022
 

In the Faith That Looks Through Death, the 2020 debut EP of Vital Spirit (which we had the privilege of premiering), was a true gem. Black metal provided the backbone for the music, but it flourished through the fuel of other wide-ranging inspirations, both conceptual and musical.

The band is a Vancouver duo — guitarist/bassist/vocalist Kyle Tavares (Seer, Wormwitch) and drummer Israel Langlais (Wormwitch) — but the EP took shape in between Wormwitch’s 2018 and 2019 American tours, and thus it was animated by the lands to the south that these two saw and the histories of those places. “Harrowing ballads imbued with the enduring spirit of the Americas” is how they described that four-song EP, and through it they brought to life visions of the Old West and Southwest of the U.S.

After hearing that remarkable EP we hoped it wouldn’t be a one-off adventure but instead an excursion that would continue. “There is, after all,” we wrote, “a lot of source material in the history and landscapes of the Americas that’s yet to be mined!” We and a lot of other fans have gotten our wish, because on May 6th Vendetta Records and Hidden Tribe will release Vital Spirit‘s debut album, Still as the Night, Cold as the Wind. Continue reading »

MISERY INDEX – COMPLETE CONTROL

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
May 022022
 

(Andy Synn shares his thoughts on the new Misery Index album, scheduled for release next Friday)

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” That’s how the hoary old cliché goes, right?

It just so happens, though, that it’s very much true in this particular case, as there’s no mistaking a Misery Index album when you hear it, whether you’re listening to their more overtly Grind-influenced early work, or their more recent, Death Metal focussed records, or anything in between.

That being said, it definitely feels – in hindsight – that the band’s post-Traitors transition into being a “pure” Death Metal act reached its apex (or nadir, depending on how you feel about it) on 2014’s The Killing Gods, with 2019’s Rituals of Power suggesting a slight return towards their thrashier, punkier roots in places.

That’s why it shouldn’t be too surprising, if you’ve been paying attention, to learn that on Complete Control the Baltimore bruisers have decided to let their inner Hardcore band out to play… and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Continue reading »

MOURNFUL CONGREGATION: “THE EXUVIAE OF GODS — PART I”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 022022
 

(Wil Cifer wrote the following review of a new album-length EP by the Australian extreme doom band Mournful Congregation. The first in a two-part series of EPs, it will be released by 20 Buck Spin (North America) and Osmose Productions (everywhere else) on May 27th.)

When it comes to sub-genres in metal, funeral doom is one of my favorites. It is typically the more depressive of the doom sub-genres, though just playing at a dopamine-draining tempo is not the requirement to excel in this style. With any form of extreme music, the oppressive heaviness might be enough for the first song, then after that it boils down to the question, “But can you write a song ?”

Here is what puts this Australian band at the top of the funeral doom heap. They might even be the best, though Evoken is neck-and-neck with them. In saying that it means my expectations are high. What I hoped for was a new full-length album, since it has been four years since their last release. The reality is this is the first of a two-part series of EPs. We are getting three songs, one of these being a reworking of a song from their 1995 demo tape. Which, considering that was 27 years ago, makes this for all practical purposes a new song. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: HOLY DEATH — “MORAL TERROR VOL. 1”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Apr 282022
 

It’s fair to say that we’ve been following the L.A.-based death-doom outfit Holy Death very closely ever since discovering their second EP in 2020 — following them like a panting dog scampering after a moving car, tongue wagging and slobber flying. In fact, the post you’re now reading marks the sixth time we’ve written about them in barely two years. Yes, we are big fans.

The occasion for today’s slobber is a new Holy Death EP, a two-song discharge entitled Moral Terror Vol. 1, so-named because it’s the first in a three-part series that the band plan on releasing this year. It’s set for digital release on April 29th, but we’ve got a premiere stream of its two diabolically punishing tracks today. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THORIUM — “DANMARK”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 272022
 

The heavyweight Danish death metal band Thorium are just a few days days away from releasing their fifth album in a career that’s now more than two decades in the making. With Denmark, they again prove both their devotion to undying traditions of the old school(s) and their talent for making them come vibrantly and viciously alive in the here and now.

Students and lovers of death metal know that there’s not just one old school of the craft, and Thorium draw their influence from multiple institutions — from the chainsaw chugging and creepy eeriness of Swedish death metal to the faster and more vicious variants from the old Floridian scene, and more besides (including a bit of “blackening” on some tracks). They engage in mayhem, but make abundant use of punishing groove, and they have an ear for ear-worm melody that makes the songs catchy as well as gruesome and exhilarating.

And so it’s a genuine pleasure for us to host a premiere stream of Danmark in its entirety, in advance of the April 29 release by Emanzipation Productions. Continue reading »

MIZMOR/THOU – MYOPIA

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 272022
 

(Andy Synn invites you to open your eyes, and your ears, to the morbid magnificence of Myopia, the recently-released collaborative album by Mizmor and Thou)

I am, as has been well-documented by now, something of a sceptic when it comes to so-called “supergroups”, whose main impact on “the scene” tends to be just taking up space and column inches which would be better off given over to less well-known (and better) bands.

There are exceptions to this “rule”, of course, and the common factor between them seems to be a real sense of collaboration, a partnership driven by an irresistible need to create, as opposed to the crass commercial aspirations or lazy self-aggrandisation which tends to fuel the majority of these shallow vanity projects.

Thankfully, as you may already have guessed, this new collaboration between Mizmor and Thou – written and recorded in secret and released without any prior fanfare to coincide with their joint-performance at Roadburn Festival last week – falls firmly into the former camp, and finds the two bands joining forces to create a singular piece of anguished, blackened art that truly feels far, far greater than the mere sum of its parts.

Continue reading »

HURAKAN: “VIA AETERNA”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 272022
 

(On April 15th Lacerated Enemy Records released a new album by the French band Hurakan, and DGR has given it the following review.)

Confession: I find the times when a band becomes a completely different group within the span of a few years fascinating. As if a giant, historical brainwipe happened and the group essentially had to rebuild themselves from the ground up and the only thing that remained was the name. Now, the band must define themselves again and make the name fit the band, not the band fit the name, as if to justify moving into the name of the group like a crab upgrading its shell – or in this case, insectoid font logo for an image more sharp and pointy – for something else.

French bruisers Hurakan are still a young-ish group, as we’re still at the point where a debut release only having come out five years ago doesn’t seem like that long. Yet Hurakan find themselves in an interesting position with their latest release Via Aeterna, which landed on April 13th, 2022. Subject to a pretty sizeable lineup shift in the three years between the release of 2019’s Abomination of Aurokos and their newest album, Hurakan are a different beast.

You get the sense that with the mostly single-word song titles and the single-minded focus on a more deathcore-oriented form of brutality, the Hurakan that wrote a song called “Slamming Brutal Shit” and dropped it right before the end of a sci-fi maelstrom of brutal death style album may have their eyes focused elsewhere. The question that rises with Via Aeterna, then, is just where are the band looking? Continue reading »

SPILL YOUR GUTS – THE WRATH IT TAKES

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 262022
 

(Andy Synn says it’s time to get rowdy with the new album from Shanghai’s Spill Your Guts)

Two of my favourite things about music are discovering new artists/albums and sharing them with other people.

And, let me tell you, I’ve been antsy to share these guys with you ever since I stumbled across them last week.

So let’s not waste any time and get right to it, shall we?

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FERALIA — “UNDER STIGE / OVER DIANAM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 262022
 

 

As the title of Feralia‘s new record suggests, it’s a two-part work, combining the album-length Under Stige with the EP-length Over Dianam. They are conceptually linked, focusing on “the rituality of Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Roman traditions”, but musically they are different.

The band and the label that will release it on April 28th (Time To Kill Records) characterize the two parts in gender terms: “As Under Stige is extreme, nocturnal, ritualistic and manly, Over Dianam develops in the opposite direction. Four folk-oriented tracks that carry more of a bright, ambient, feminine mood, overall giving life to a play of opposites that is the essence to the new album.”

However one might choose to classify and characterize these two companion works, the combination of them creates a fantastic listening experience from an extremely talented band, and one that we’re delighted to share with you in complete form today. Continue reading »

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