AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RITUAL DICTATES — “GIVE IN TO DESPAIR”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Mar 302020
 

 

Sometimes when a band pull from as broad and deep a well of musical inspirations as Ritual Dictates have done on their debut album, the results can be disjointed and chaotically jarring. But when the interweaving of stylistic ingredients is as masterfully and naturally accomplished as it is here, the results can stand out from the pack, and provide a multi-faceted experience that’s an enormous thrill. And that’s the best single word I can think of for Give In To Despair — it’s a thriller, from beginning to end.

The singles released from the album so far have already attracted a lot of excited attention around the web, but for those who might be encountering this band for the first time (and it’s a good time, because we’re streaming the whole album today), it’s a project formed by ex-3 Inches of Blood members Justin Hagberg and Ash Pearson (who’s also the drummer of Revocation), both of whom have also been members of Allfather (Canada) and Angel Grinder, respectively. And for this grand debut, they also enlisted an eye-opening group of guest performers from metal and rock, whose names are worth listing before we go further: Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 1): KREATOR, LIGHT DWELLER, DISROTTER

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Mar 282020
 

 

Thanks to the amazing Zoom service, I participated in a couple of virtual happy-hour celebrations last night, woke up woozy as a result of that, and then had to do a work-related Zoom conference for an hour and a half this morning. So I’m getting a very late start on this post.

I thought about just not posting anything this Saturday due to the lateness of the hour and my still-hungover condition, but then remembered this recent comment by a regular reader: “Especially now, when days morph into each other and life has slowed down considerably – and we have time to think about perhaps less pleasant facets to our lives – structure and regularity are important. New music, to me at least, is an important element to this….” I feel the same way. And so I decided to at least make a brief start on another giant collection of new music, and then finish it in a MUCH larger Part 2 of this tomorrow.

KREATOR (Germany)

I was helpless to resist beginning this collection with “666-World Divided“. It’s such a blood-pumping, neck-wrecking blast to listen to, with wonderfully vicious vocals, a glorious chorus (that puts me in mind of Scandinavian melodic death metal), delicious soloing, and a segue into very sinister territory with choral voices. The video for the song is also a blast to watch. Continue reading »

ALTERNATIVE RELEASE DAY ROUND-UP: AUTOMB / CHRONICLE / NOMAD / OMEGA INFINITY / WARP CHAMBER

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Mar 272020
 


Automb

 

(Andy Synn prepared this collection of reviews, all addressing fine albums that are being released today.)

It’s a very busy Friday for releases this week, both big and small. Some of them we’ve covered here already (Aodon, Perdition Temple, The Malice), some of them we’ll probably get to over the next couple of weeks… maybe… and some of them have already received significant coverage elsewhere.

The purpose of today’s column however is to highlight a handful of bands/albums which might not necessarily receive the same amount of attention and/or adoration as some of the bigger or more high-profile releases, beginning with… drum roll please… Continue reading »

FLAVOURS OF FRANCE: AODON / HORNED / SATAN

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 252020
 


Aodon

 

(Herein, Andy Synn sings the praises of three recent releases by French bands who present varying forms of Gallic metallic extremity.)

While many of us may be locked down right now, waiting for the current crisis to pass (which it will, I promise you), that doesn’t mean we can’t travel the world… musically speaking anyway… so today we’re off to France to check out three killer new records from three exceptionally talented bands. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PERDITION TEMPLE — “SACRAMENTS OF DESCENSION”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 242020
 

 

For those of us who relished and reveled in Perdition Temple‘s last album, 2015’s The Tempter’s Victorious, it has been a long wait, but that wait is nearly over. On Friday of this week, March 27th, Hells Headbangers will release the band’s third album, Sacraments of Descension, on CD, LP, tape, and digitally. It fully deserves that kind of royal release treatment because listening to this record — which we’re giving you the chance to do today — is like sitting in on a masterclass in breathtaking musical demonism.

For the new album Gene Palubicki (co-founder of the legendary Angelcorpse) again makes hellish and harrowing guitar sounds but also returns to vocals, and he was joined by bassist Alex Blume (a longtime member of Ares Kingdom and also Palubicki’s bandmate in Blasphemic Cruelty) and drummer Ron Parmer (of Amon and Brutality). That’s a lot of veteran talent, and it shows in spades on this new album. Continue reading »

FEMINAZGUL: “NO DAWN FOR MEN”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Mar 232020
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by North Carolina’s Feminazgul, which was released on March 17th.)

There’s a lot of things I love about Metal. Heck, I wouldn’t have been writing here for over nine feckin’ years if that wasn’t the case. But, truth be told, there’s a lot of things about the Metal scene which I don’t love.

For one thing, our tendency to bend over backwards to excuse or justify something reprehensible which our favourite artists have done, purely because of how good their music is, has always struck me as pretty distasteful (and I’m not excusing myself from this either, as I’ve certainly done it in the past).

But, similarly, the idea of simply praising a band for having the “right” ideology, for saying the “right” things, doesn’t sit quite right with me either, and I’ve seen far too many instances recently where people seem willing to overlook a band’s relative mediocrity simply because they’ve got the “right” message.

Don’t get me wrong, a band’s message, a band’s meaning, can be just as important as their medium (though it doesn’t have to be), but I don’t think, with the wealth of options available to us all these days, we should feel like we have to sacrifice one in favour of the other.

Which brings me, smoothly, to Feminazgul (FYI, love the name), a band whose music and meaning is so tightly interwoven that there’s simply no question of separating the art from the artist. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE MALICE — “LEGIONS OF THE DAWN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 232020
 

 

The cover art for Legions of the Dawn (by Remy from Headsplit Design) is sure to seize attention. The sight of all those humanoid horrors shambling through horned tentacles sprouting from hellish ground makes a vivid and ghoulish impression. There’s murder in those eyes and ruthless hunger behind those teeth. But what lies within the album behind that ghastly artwork? You’re about to find out.

Legions of the Dawn is the work of The Malice, a two-headed death-metal monster consisting of Hubeister (Father Death) Liljegren from Sweden and Claudio (CorpseFührer) Enzler from Germany. With a pair of EPs and a single behind them, they first released this album as a demo last September under the title of The Unholy Communion, but it has now been picked up by Satanath Records and More Hate Productions for re-release on March 25th with new mastering, that eye-catching new artwork, and of course the new title. Continue reading »

TESTAMENT: “TITANS OF CREATION”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Mar 232020
 

 

The half-witted editor of this site (that would be me) didn’t realize until this past weekend that Wil Cifer had sent in this review a week ago. And thus it is purely a coincidence, and a very sad one, that it’s now being posted the day after we learned that Chuck and Tiffany Billy and members of Testament’s crew have tested positive for COVID-19, apparently contracted during the band’s recently completed European tour. Members of their tour-mates Death Angel and Exodus have also tested positive for the virus. We wish them all the best under these unfortunate circumstances. Titans of Creation will be released on April 3rd by Nuclear Blast. And now, on to Wil’s review…

 

Testament lurk just outside of the “Big 4 “ but, The Ritual aside, they have held their own against Slayer over the years when it has come to putting out quality heaviness. The New Order might have been the metal album of 1988. That year had some tough competition, so at least in the top five. The first song on this album, “Children of the Next Level”, feels like it is fueled with the same fire that propelled their glory days. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): GÖDEN, HEAVEN SHALL BURN, VREDEHAMMER, BYTHOS, SLAVES BC, DUHKHA, THE RITE, DERANGED

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Mar 222020
 

 

I’m still working my way through that list of 80 potentially interesting new songs and full releases that I mentioned in Part 1 of this big round-up. Of course, not all of those 80 are going to pass my smell test, and I couldn’t write about all of them even if they did. But there’s still a lot I want to recommend, and so with the exception of the first item below, I’ll just be offering brief impressions along with the streams.

If all goes as planned, there will be a Part 3 tomorrow. A SHADES OF BLACK column will follow this one today, whenever I finish writing it.

GÖDEN (U.S.)

From 1989 to 1994 Winter released only one demo tape (Hour of Doom), one album (Into Darkness), and one EP (Eternal Frost), and nothing since then. But those recordings were enough to cement their place in the history of extreme metal and to become the jumping-off point for countless other bands in the doom and sludge genres for the last 30 years. And thus when Svart Records announced weeks ago that it would be releasing an album by a band it characterized as “a long-awaited continuation of what Winter would have been”, I sat up and paid attention. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MEMBARIS — “MISANTHROSOPHIE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 202020
 

 

On March 24th W.T.C. Productions will release the long-awaited fifth album by the German black metal band Membaris. Eight years is indeed a long time in between records, and that’s how much time has elapsed since their last one, Entartet. But holy hell, the return they have made with Misanthrosophie is nothing short of spectacular.

To crib from some of the many words to follow in an introductory review, there is a theatrical quality to the album as a whole, like a fantastical Baroque pageant that seems to put the richness of humanity, in all its wildly swinging emotions — its madness and its never-ending grief, its joy and absurdity, its soulful poignancy and heedless cruelty — onto a grand stage. And to do this Membaris have seamlessly incorporated a wide range of musical styles across many decades, from both metal and rock, into their thorned framework of black metal. Every song holds wondrous surprises and thrilling experiences, every one of them fueled with undeniable passion and executed with tremendous skill. Continue reading »

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