AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DOWNCROSS — “CURRENT TOWARDS END”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 082020
 

 

The Belarusian black metal band Downcross made a startling debut with their first album, Mysteries of Left Path. To paraphrase what we wrote in introducing our premiere of the album early last year, every one of the eight tracks on the album was emotionally powerful, and powerful in the production of their sound. They included magnetically attractive melodic hooks and shifts among contrasting moods within each song — from cold-hearted to glorious, from bereft to barbaric, and much more.

There was also heavyweight heft in the low end, and tremendous, penetrating, gleaming vibrancy in the guitar tones (without becoming completely “clean” in their tone). The drumming rocked and romped as often as it thundered, and there were as many hook-laden strummed chords as the dense wash of blazing tremolo vibrations.

The duo of vocalist/drummer Ldzmr and guitarist Dzmtr quickly proved that their debut was no fluke, because their second album (which we also premiered last fall), What Light Covers Not, was also tremendously good, and further vivid evidence that Downcross are gifted songwriters. Continue reading »

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER: “VERMINOUS”

 Album Reviews  9 Responses »
Apr 072020
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by The Black Dahlia Murder, due for release on April 17th by Metal Blade Records.)

If I were forced to select one word to describe The Black Dahlia Murder’s particular brand of high-stakes, high-adrenaline Death Metal that word would undoubtedly be… anthemic.

After all, one of the band’s defining features has always been their ability to conjure up a seemingly endless series of contagious, crowd-friendly choruses and red-hot hooks to balance out their molten metallic mayhem, with much of this burden often falling to lunatic-larynxed frontman Trevor Strnad, whose distinctive delivery – part predatory preacher, part Death Metal drill sergeant, part crazed carnival barker – is an inimitable part of the group’s sound.

The band’s last album, 2017’s superb Nightbringers, in many ways felt like the apotheosis of this, with songs such as “Kings of the Nightworld” and the titanic title track featuring some of the catchiest, most bombastic material the group have ever written.

The thing is… once you’ve peaked like that, there’s almost nowhere to go but down. So the big question now is whether or not Verminous is going to be a victim of the band’s success, or whether the gang have found a way to escape the curse of diminishing returns… Continue reading »

SYMBOLIK: “EMERGENCE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 062020
 

 

(On April 10th The Artisan Era will release the debut album of California’s Symbolik, and today we present DGR’s detailed review.)

Stockton, CA’s Symbolik are a band I’ve been following for a long time. Seeing their logo pop up on a few local show flyers way back in the early 2010s led to me finding the group’s EP Pathogenesis and being so impressed by it that I wound up seeing the band live three times after that. They were one of those groups I had thought was going to really cut a swath through the hyper-speed tech-death scene at the time, long before it had started congealing around a handful of specific record labels that would later unwittingly codify an overall sound. However, things progressed slowly in their camp and barring a single entitled “Diverging Mortal Flesh” that came out in 2015, Symbolik remained fairly silent save for the occasional here-and-there show.

It wasn’t until earlier this year, over eight and a half years after the release of their Pathogenesis EP that we finally heard from the group — now signed to The Artisan Era and ready to release a full-length debut entitled Emergence. Continue reading »

ALTERNATIVE RELEASE DAY ROUND-UP: CATALEPSIA / ENDLESS FORMS MOST GRUESOME / HADOPELAGIAL / RELIC POINT / RITUAL CONTRITION / SKYEATER

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Apr 032020
 

 

(Andy Synn has again assembled reviews and streams of new albums for this release-day Friday that might not be getting the attention they deserve elsewhere.)

People seemed to enjoy this the last time I did it, so I thought to myself… why not keep the streak alive?

So here we go, trying to go two for two, with another quick round-up of releases which you may otherwise have missed! Continue reading »

BENIGHTED: “OBSCENE REPRESSED”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 022020
 

 

(We present DGR’s typically detailed review of Obscene Repressed, the new album by the French maulers in Benighted, which will be released by Season of Mist on April 10th.)

It probably doesn’t need to be stated that we’re fans of the French death metal crew Benighted and their brand of frantic mania, especially given that we’ve kept a pretty constant eye on the crew from release to release. Thus, we’ve been patiently waiting for the group’s newest album Obscene Repressed, a thematically twisted concept album that reads part horror story, part Pornhub top video statistics by State chart, and part gleeful exploration of insanity with the music stylings to back it up. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE AND REVIEW: DEATH WHORE’S SELF-TITLED EP

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

 

“Imagine a cross between the brutalizing grooves of Y2K-era Metal Hardcore greats like Terror, Xibalba, Nails or Rotten Sound, and old school Swedish Death Metal breakneck riffing”. That’s part of the introduction that Death Whore gave us to their self-titled EP, along with references to Harm’s Way and Entombed. That description of the band’s amalgam of punishing hardcore and bone-mangling, neck-wrecking Swedish death metal punched all sorts of pleasure-center buttons in our brains, and then it turned out that the music fully lived up to the descriptions. And thus we were eager to help spread the word by premiering a full stream of the EP today, in advance of its April 10 release on CD and digital.

Death Whore rampage through seven tracks in 20 minutes, and every one of those compact brawlers is explosively destructive and propelled by the kind of feral and filthy savagery that will light a fire under your pulse rate. Continue reading »

DARK FORTRESS: “SPECTRES FROM THE OLD WORLD”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 022020
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the new album by Germany’s Dark Fortress, which was released by Century Media on February 28th.)

This COVID-19 situation has really fucked with all of us in big and small ways.  That should go without saying, but it’s also my excuse for being so behind on NCS shit.  Quarantine prep, a tornado hitting close to home and putting me out of power for a bit, and other setbacks have kept me distracted from my NCS duties and it’s sucked. But now I’m back to full operational no-life quarantine activity and I can finally get to this.

I’m glad in the end that I’ve been held up, because it’s given me an absurd amount of time to spend with Dark Fortress in the interim.  They are definitely one of my personal favorite black metal bands, Old Mans Child and Keep Of Kalessin joining them in my top three.  Their dedication to doing a form of black metal that’s sort of amorphous while being incredibly disciplined, precise, and unafraid to consistently dive into other sub-genres of extreme metal is the kind of thing I love, just in principle.

Spectres From The Old World is a record in particular that I find fascinating, because if anything, it points to a band who are moving away from black metal as the foundation of their sound and want to re-purpose it as a flourish. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: BEGGAR / CALLIGRAM / VIDEO NASTIES

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 012020
 


Beggar

 

(Andy Synn returns to a series in which he extols the virtues of new or soon-forthcoming releases by bands from the UK, and does that for three records here.)

Well, well, well… what do we have here then?

Ahem, cough, sorry, I turned into a nineteenth century cockney flatfoot there for a second.

Anyway, today’s edition of “The Best of British” features three albums which are bound to make quite an impact (and, in some cases, have done already) in the Metal world, both at home and abroad, and it’s my distinct pleasure to be able to do my small part to help raise their profile (even if just a little bit). Continue reading »

WAKE: “DEVOURING RUIN”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 012020
 

 

(We present DGR’s detailed review of the new album by Canada’s Wake, which was just released on March 27th by Translation Loss Records.)

If you’ve been following the site recently you might’ve spotted the massive review collections fellow NCS writer Andy Synn has kicked out. Among the many groups covered (here) were Seattle black metal newcomers Izthmi and their disc The Arrows Of Our Ways. The Arrows Of Our Ways is a rare album, one amongst a packed genre that somehow manages to encapsulate the entirety of its current scene within its track list. The music presents a perfect snapshot of where their scene was at that exact moment — slight hints towards the future but mostly a perfect picture of the hive of activity and creativity that currently exists within their own spectrum, as if the band had shot an arrow of their own right through the center of it, as if competing in a musical archery event.

There are certain bands who have become masters at performing this specific act, adding to and molding their musical core to often reflect where the band members’ heads are at that exact moment, as well as providing the musical snapshot discussed above. If Izthmi managed to do so for their specific subset of black metal, so too have Canada’s Wake. They have become experts at providing deep musical looks into their world at the specific moments when each of their five albums has been released, including their newest album Devouring Ruin — a disc that captures much of the current crust, grind, and overall underground metal scene by adapting and molding it to their own noisy purposes, and in the process releasing an album almost twice as long as its noise- and grind-heavy predecessor Misery Rites. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 119): WARDAEMONIC

 Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT  No Responses »
Mar 312020
 

 

(For the March 2020 edition of The Synn Report, Andy Synn has combined reviews and streams of all the releases by the Australian black metal band Wardaemonic, including their newest album Acts of Repentance, which was released by Transcending Obscurity Records on March 20th.)

Recommended for fans of: Immortal, Mayhem, 1349

From its humble beginnings in the streets and suburbs of Norway, Black Metal has stretched its eldritch tendrils far and wide, resulting in new cults and covens springing up all over the world.

There is, perhaps, no better example of how the genre has metastasised and infected practically every corner of the globe than Wardaemonic, who, despite hailing from the Western coast of Australia – about as far, both in distance and climate, from the Norwegian fjords as it’s possible to get – have spent the last fifteen years establishing their own place in the ever-growing legacy of Black Metal.

The group’s fourth (and possibly finest) album, Acts of Repentance, was released just over a week ago, so now seemed like the perfect time to bring their work to a wider audience. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries