SATURNO: “MENHIR”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jul 082020
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album, released on May 30, by the Chilean band Saturno.)

One thing that I love about Metal (one of the many things I love about Metal) is how much of a global phenomenon it’s become.

And while the majority of coverage still focuses on bands from Western Europe and North America, we’re seeing more and more music from Africa, Asia, and Central/Southern America breaking through every year, reinforcing the fact that the love of the riff transcends all national boundaries.

With that in mind, today’s trip takes us to the West coast of South America to dance around the fire with Chilean Death/Doom quintet Saturno. Continue reading »

TRIAL: “1”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 062020
 

 

(This is Todd Manning‘s review of the debut EP by the UK band Trial, which is set for release on July 10th.)

We might associate the Eighties with some sort of neon-nightmare Glam Metal and New Wave bastardized Pop Music, but there was definitely a strain of post-collapse apocalypticism running through the underground of Metal, Punk and Industrial at the time that seems to capture the dystopian/collapse feeling better than just about anyone, including those of us who now seem to be living out that particular dream. Trial might be of today, but they tap that Eighties eschatological strain as well as anyone.

This music sounds like it was composed in a plastic coffin, one of many strewn across the nuclear wasteland. The guitar summons the feel of primitive Thrash, simple riffs played in a minimalist fashion, almost sounding as if they’ve been ripped from some long-lost cassette demo. These are then juxtaposed against a cold and punishing drum machine and an equally disaffected vocal style that seems smuggled in from a Post-Punk record. The result is both captivating and punishing, often walking a fine-line near the fist-pumping goodness that recalls the Heavy Metal of an earlier time, yet with a layer of noise and abstraction poured over the mix that keeps this from being just a nostalgia trip. Continue reading »

MANTAR: “GRUNGETOWN HOOLIGANS II”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jul 032020
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new covers EP by the German band Mantar, (a favorite at our site since the beginning), which is out now on Brutal Panda Records.)

Is it just me, or has it been a hell of a long week?

I’m not just talking about things here at NCS either. My job has been keeping me extra busy every single day, and between that and trying to balance things at home and with the band… it seems like I haven’t had a moment to spare, and right now I honestly feel like I could sleep for a week.

Because of that, because of everything that’s been going on, I’ve decided that I wanted to end the week on something a little bit more “fun”. After all, the only reason any of us write here for NCS (it’s certainly not for fame or fortune) is because we enjoy it. And if we’re not enjoying it, then what’s the point?

Thankfully it didn’t take me long to settle on what to write about, as not only are Mantar one of my favourite bands of the last decade but their new covers EP is one hell of way to pay tribute to the group’s influences and inspirations. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NODUS TOLLENS — “MELANCHOLIC WATERS ABLAZE WITH THE FIRES OF LOSS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  3 Responses »
Jul 022020
 

 

Nodus Tollens n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore — that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre — which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.
– The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

That definition tells you more than you might guess about the debut album of the band who took the phrase as its name. The title of that album, Melancholic Waters Ablaze with the Fires of Loss, is another significant clue. As that title suggests, and as the band’s lone member Cicatrix has described, the album was created “as an emotional exorcism, and the lyrics reflect it, dealing with grief, broken relationship, and ultimately hope, each in their turn”.

The musical expression of such emotions is of course not unique to Nodus Tollens, but as you’ll discover today through our premiere of the complete album, the manner of expression is unusual, the emotional power of the music is penetrating, and the flow of styles and moods, both within each song and among them, is enthralling. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BAIN DE SANG — “SACRIFICED FOR A LOAD OF FILTH AND LIES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 022020
 

 

If you’re a fan of such bands as Nasum, Pig Destroyer, Rotten Sound, and Napalm Death, we’ll lay favorable odds that you’re going to eat up Bain de Sang‘s new EP like a ravenous wolf. It takes only 11 minutes for the seven tracks on Sacrificed For A Load Of Filth And Lies to rampage through your cranium, almost too fast to take in, but the EP leaves a powerful impression, and you’ll probably find yourself letting it run riot through your mind a few more times in straight succession.

It’s immediately clear that Bain de Sang know what the hell they’re doing, and it’s not a shock that this Parisian band’s brand of grindcore and powerviolence is so electrifying and addictive because the band’s line-up includes ex-members of Blockheads, Comity, Judoboy, Sofy Major, and Department of Correction. Moreover, they’ve already played at Hellfest and Obscene Extreme, and shared the stage with the likes of Magrudergrind, Primitive Man, Rotten Sound, Gadget, Cloud Rat, Fuck the Facts, and Harm Done.

The EP will be released digitally by Terrain Vague as a name-tour-price download this Friday, July 3rd, which gives you another opportunity to take advantage of Bandcamp’s waiver of their revenue share on music sales if you want to make a donation. And people who prefer physical editions can also order them from Terrain Vague, who plans a release date of September 4th for those. And to make those decisions very easy, we’ve got a full stream of the EP for you right now. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 122): EXOCRINE

 Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT  2 Responses »
Jul 012020
 

 

(Andy Synn has chosen to devote his SYNN REPORT for the month of June to the discography of the French band Exocrine, whose new album Maelstrom was released by Unique Leader on June 26th.)

Recommended for fans of: The Faceless, Gorod, Beneath the Massacre

The purpose of The Synn Report is, obviously, to give our readers an overview of the background and back-catalogue of whatever band I select each month.

One of the great things about this approach, of course, is that it allows all of us (myself included) to see just how the band in question has evolved over the course of their career.

In the case of French four-piece Exocrine the band’s evolution has led them to grow from some relatively humble beginnings into something far more titanic, and if 2018’s blazing Molten Giant didn’t convince you of the group’s tech-tastic lethality then perhaps their recently released fourth record, Maelstrom, will?

Before then, of course, there’s three other albums to sink your teeth into… Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLOOD STRONGHOLD — “SPECTRES OF BLOODSHED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Jun 302020
 

 

On their new third album, Spectres of Bloodshed, the international duo known as Blood Stronghold have created a musical soundscape that’s out of this world. To be sure, the music has visceral, physically compulsive energy, but it creates fantastical visions of ancient and mythical domains. It seems to draw menacing and vicious power from lycanthropic spirits but also spawns mental images of tragic grandeur and heart-swelling splendor. It’s a fashioning of black metal that’s both carnal and elegant, both blood-pumping and mesmerizing. It seems to hearken back to a long-lost age — or to one that only exists in the imagination. Once heard, it’s not easily forgotten.

And hear it you shall, because today we present a full stream in advance of the album’s release on vinyl LP by Nebular Carcoma and Satanik Requiem. Continue reading »

CHANCROID — “BESTIAL PERVERSE OF THE ANOMALIES PSYCHONEUROTIC”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 302020
 

 

(Here’s Vonlughlio’s review of a debut brutal death metal album from Indonesia that “stands out from the masses.”)

This time around I have the chance to talk about the band Chancroid from Indonesia, whom I’ve been a fan of since 2015 when they released their promo that year.  There are a lot of BDM projects from Indonesia — they live and breathe the genre. Sure, there are a lot of same-sounding bands out there in this genre, but this is one of the cases that for me stands out from the masses.

After their 2015 promo the band released a demo in 2018 that continued their musical path with a raw production that is most welcome for the song structures they created. There’s not a lot of activity from the this project compared to others, but keep in mind that this is an underground group and things usually work a lot slower.  I did not know when they would release an EP or full-length. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: DECONSECRATION’S DEBUT DEMO

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Jun 292020
 

 

If you’re in the mood for death metal cut from particularly foul and disease-ridden cloth, ghastly in the extreme and gruesome in almost every way, then the debut demo of Deconsecration is just what the mad doctor ordered, to make the sick among you even more ill. We have Chaos Records and Caligari Records to thank for this musical abomination, which they’ve just released on CD and cassette tape, respectively.

This Seattle quintet, whose line-up is composed of ex-members of Capitalist Casualties, Catheter, Wilt, and Hideous Creep and features current members of Foul and Anoxia, were obviously in that mood when they recorded these four tracks. Each of the songs is dynamic in its pacing and variable in its other energies, but there’s nothing about it that’s healthy. On the other hand, it’s very true to the old spirit of death metal that had the stench of the morgue in its nostrils and relished images of reanimated corpses crawling from festering graves. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: OHHMS / TIBERIUS / WREN

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 292020
 


OHHMS

 

(Andy Synn wrote this trio of reviews, covering just-releqsed albums by bands from his home country.)

This edition of “The Best of British” – my long-running column where I take a look at some of the best-kept secrets and flawed-but-fascinating gems coming out of the UK underground – is a particularly timely one… or, at least it was meant to be, since it was originally intended to be published on Friday last week, the same day that all three of these bands released their new albums.

Sadly the twin pressures of my day job (which remains reliably, sometimes excessively, busy) and some important band business (which I’ll hopefully be able to talk more about soon) meant that I didn’t manage to get the column fully finished until far too late in the day, at which point our beloved leader convinced me that we’d be better off waiting until Monday (i.e., today) instead.

So, here we are, better late than never, with three new albums straight from the bountiful bosom of the British music scene. Continue reading »

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