UNSUNG HEROES OF 2021: MAGDALENE / MAHA SOHONA / MIRE

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 042022
 

(Andy Synn presents three more albums from last year that you may have missed)

You may not realise it, but I’m actually a little behind (already!) with this series of “Unsung Heroes” articles, as I’d originally meant to start posting them last week.

Unfortunately I’ve been sick with a (thankfully relatively mild) dose of that which shall not be named for a little while now, and between the lethargy, breathlessness, and general mental fuzziness I’ve not really had it in me to get any writing done.

Until recently, that is, as you may have already noticed that we’ve published one of these articles already (focussing on Grieving, Kollapse, and Monument of Misanthropy), with at least one more… and possibly another after that… lined up to follow this one.

So let’s all cross our fingers and hope that this renewed burst of mental energy I’m feeling portends a quick recovery, as I’ve got lots of albums from last year still to write about even before I get started on whatever 2022 has to offer!

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UNSUNG HEROES OF 2021: GRIEVING / KOLLAPSE / MONUMENT OF MISANTHROPY

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Jan 032022
 

(After a short hiatus Andy Synn returns with the first in a series of articles focussing on some of the “unsung heroes” of last year)

Let me present to you my simple thesis for why these “Unsung heroes…” posts exist.

Quite simply, there’s too much music released every year and I can’t keep up with it all!

This doesn’t mean that I/we haven’t listened to them, by any means – in fact all but one of the albums I’m going to be highlighting over the next week or two were mentioned in my annual year-end round-up – it’s just that listening to and appreciating an album is only the first step… actually finding time to write about them, in any depth or detail, is a whole different matter.

So consider these posts a second chance to catch up with a few albums which I would have recommended (heck, one of the records featured in this article snuck its way into the “bonus features” of my “Critical Top Ten” even though I hadn’t written a word about it before) if I’d had more time to write this year!

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SHADES OF BLACK: HORN, PROMETEUS, STRAEGOR

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jan 022022
 

 

Dead Week is dead and so is the old year. With a turn of the calendar page we’ve started another 365-day march into the unknown even though everything feels just as familiar as yesterday. Tomorrow will be more work or more school and definitely more covid, which is why I’ve always felt the first Monday of a new year is kind of depressing: What’s on the horizon that’s worth looking forward to?

Well, hopefully you can find something, perhaps some new music. I have some of that to share with you today, in this first Shades of Black for 2022 — which is more abbreviated than usual and probably more strange than usual too.

HORN (Germany)

Horn‘s new single “Alpenrekorder” is as majestic and as desolate as the alpine vistas in the accompanying video. The music is both uplifting and deeply melancholy, and carries a feeling of reverence in both of those aspects. It benefits from a guest cello performance and from Horn‘s own performance on another old instrument, which seems to be an hourglass-style mountain dulcimer (based on my own internet browsing). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: JUST BEFORE DAWN, KATTLIK, MUERT, SENTIENT HORROR

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Dec 282021
 

The high temperature in Seattle on Monday was 23 degrees, making it the coldest day in 31 years according to the National Weather Service. I live close to Seattle, and I feel like I’m in the Arctic, even though I’ve never been to the Arctic. Snow and ice have covered everything in my community and the roads are dangerous, in part because no one here fucking knows how to drive in treacherous conditions.

The upside is that there are attractive snow-covered views out the window in the forest where I live, and I’ve had enough shut-in time on my hands to compile the selections of music you’re about to encounter. If you live someplace where the temps are in the ’70s or ’80s F., or in a frigid place where local governments and residents actually know how to deal with it, please just keep that to yourself.

JUST BEFORE DAWN (Sweden)

About 10 days ago this Swedish death metal war machine discharged a new EP named In the Realm of Ash and Sorrow, as a a tribute to their fallen brothers Sven Groß and L.G. Petrov. For this EP the ever-busy JBD riffmeister Anders Biazzi wrote four new original songs and recorded them with vocalist Remco Kreft (Graceless, Soulburn) and drummer Jon Rudin (Wombbath, Pale King), with guitar solos provided by Kreft and Björn Brusse (Graceless).

In addition, the band recorded a cover of the Entombed song “Drowned” in remembrance of L.G. Petrov, and that one features Gustav Myrin on guitars and bass, with Myrin and Daniel Gustavsson doing the solos. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KAPALA — “DOOMSDAY REQUIEM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Dec 272021
 

 

Few bands on the planet embrace and channel the violent destructiveness of War Metal with as much fanatic fervor as the Kolkata-based band Kapala. Their slaughtering amalgam of death metal and harsh noise seems to be fueled by hate and driven by a disdain for weakness of any kind.

And yet their talents are multi-faceted. There is much more going on within their creations than unapologetic sonic annihilation, and that makes their music fascinating and mind-altering as well as ruinous. It really doesn’t sound like anything else; indeed, linking it with War Metal, as that sub-genre is commonly understood, might be more misleading than descriptive.

Kapala‘s new 22-minute EP Doomsday Requiem is powerful proof of these points. It is indeed ruthlessly destructive and harrowing in its intensity, but its musical craftsmanship is also impressive, revealing nuances and embellishments that link it unmistakably to the ancient legends of the Indian subcontinent. The music creates an atmosphere of mysticism and spiritual possession, capable of inducing perilous trances.

Those qualities — and a panoply of killer riffs and electrifying rhythmic assaults — distinguish the EP from the kind of War Metal that might be cathartic on a first listen but doesn’t lure many people to listen more than once. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can test out the truth of these statements for yourselves, because today we premiere a full stream of Doomsday Requiem in advance of its release by Dunkelheit Produktionen on the last day of this wretched year. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DØDSKVAD — “KRØNIKE II”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 202021
 

 

With Krønike II, now set for a January 20 release by Caligari Records, the Norwegian death metal band Dødskvad continue on the journey through the old legends of their homeland which they began on Krønike I in 2020. Founder E.R. (Desolation Realm, Stygian Ruin) is still at the helm, joined by members of Obliteration and Sovereign (among other bands). Taking their inspiration from Norse myths, they’ve compiled four tracks, and they introduce the soundscapes with these words:

“In the midst of bloody battlefields; through thundering heavens; on the outer branches of the world tree; within the deep caverns beneath the roots. Across a blackened land, fate strikes dissonant chords.”

Dissonance does play a role in these songs, along with other ingredients that make them disconcerting. But every song is multi-faceted in ways that constantly will keep listeners on their toes — and rock them back on their heels, with heads spinning. True to the inspirations, the music also sounds otherworldly, manifesting strange and often terrifying visions, a changing pattern of cold dread and crazed exhilaration. Continue reading »

FUNERAL MIST: “DEIFORM”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Dec 172021
 

Funeral Mist‘s last album, Hekatomb, dropped in June 2018 without any preview. I rushed to listen to it, and rushed a review into print, more to urge it upon listeners than to give it a carefully considered assessment, especially an assessment that would compare it to the band’s preceding albums.

Well, today NoEvDia released a new Funeral Mist album named Deiform, and I’m basically doing the same thing.

This time I actually received an advance copy, but it wasn’t very much in advance of today’s release and it came at a time when I couldn’t drop everything else (much as I wanted to) and really become immersed in what Arioch had created this time around.

So once again, although I’m providing my immediate impressions of the album, I’m mainly urging people to listen to it, especially year-end list-makers who haven’t finished their lists, because Deiform has the capacity to up-end the process. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BENEATH THE SOD — “BENEATH THE SOD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 152021
 

 

“Beneath the Sod scrape back the top soil to lay bare all that is repulsive and feculent beneath. Narcotic and eldritch, Beneath the Sod erodes the listener with a writhing tapestry of industrial doom, grinding noise and hallucinatory horror. Punishing and bewildering, with each release Beneath the Sod sinks deeper into their unique and singularly maddening mire”.

Those are the accurately evocative words with which Cursed Monk Records introduces a new self-titled EP by this utterly diabolical Irish band, an EP set for release on December 17th that we’re presenting today in the full bloom of its terrors. We have more detailed commentary of our own, of course, but at least one more way of attempting to sum up the experience might be this:

It is deeply unsettling, even to the point of inducing queasiness in the listener, and brings forward the stuff of nightmares as old as humanity, and yet manages to become bewitching, to transfix attention, maybe in part because it is so fiendishly effective in crushing the soul and unhinging the mind. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): KADAVEREICH — “RADIANCE OF DOOM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 142021
 

 

On December 18th Godz Ov War Productions will release Radiance of Doom, the debut EP of the Russian blackened death metal band Kadavereich. Apart from a reference that the line-up includes members of Grond, Act Of God, and Gwarloth, Godz Ov War gave us no hints about the nature of the music the band had created when it asked that we host the EP’s full streaming premiere today. And thus the feeling of shock and awe that we experienced when listening to it was all the more stupefying.

In a nutshell, the sonic power of the EP is immense, and its impact is utterly devastating (but equally electrifying). It chokes the senses, blots out the ability to think of anything else, and becomes an all-consuming, bone-smashing, mind-mauling experience in remorseless destruction, abject terror, and paralyzing agony. If you’re looking for a transfixing visceral experience and don’t mind being subjected to ruthless audio ruination, you’ve come to the right place. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOATBLOOD — “BLOODDAWN / ANNIHILATION OF THIS WORLD”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 132021
 

 

I’ve spilled many words about Goatblood over the years in a seemingly endless quest to describe just how maliciously ruinous yet gripping their music is. I have another opportunity today, because we’re premiering a new two-part album named Blooddawn​/​Annihilation Of This World.

Hatred, disgust, and violence have always seemed to be the dominating inspirations for this malefic duo’s bestial black/death metal ministrations, the more willfully offensive the better. The music’s not ostentatious or pretentious — quite the opposite, which is part of its primeval appeal. All those ingredients are again present and accounted for in this new album, but the two halves of it nonetheless present slightly different takes on the band’s core malignancy of sound. Continue reading »

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