AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOTT — “4”

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Nov 212019
 

 

This makes the second time in as many years that we’ve hosted the premiere of music by the Italian black metal band Nott, which is the creative vehicle of the lone wolf Mortifero from Lombardy. Last year the occasion was a song from an EP named Vestigium Mortis, and today it’s the advent of Nott’s fourth album, simply entitled 4.

Like the album title, the eight songs presented here are identified by numbers — chapter numbers in a musical volume. And this particular volume of Nott’s works will be released on November 30th by Third I Rex, in advance of which we’re hosting this complete stream of the music. Continue reading »

OBSEQUIAE: “THE PALMS OF SORROWED KINGS”

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Nov 212019
 

 

(Our old friend Professor D. Grover the XIIIth (ex-The Number of the Blog) returns to NCS with a review of the new album by the Minnesota “castle metal” band Obsequiae, which will be released by 20 Buck Spin this coming Friday, November 22nd.)

Joyous greetings and salutations, friends. Evidently, it’s been four years since Obsequiae graced the metal world with Aria Of Vernal Tombs, an album that came more or less out of nowhere to become my favorite album of that year. Following that, rather than wearing out its welcome, Aria instead settled further into my consciousness, cementing its status as my favorite black metal album ever and seizing a likely spot as one of my ten favorite albums ever.

Friends, given the volume of music I listen to on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis, this is no small thing.

Really, though, even as Aria settled around my brain like a comfortable chair around your butt, I found myself craving more, and so when I discovered that they finally had a follow-up album in the works, my excitement was palpable. (Entertainingly enough, there exists a possibility that I may have offered favors of a sexual nature to Islander in exchange for the procurement of a promo copy of the album, although I will neither confirm not deny such rumors. I can admit, however, that once said promo was acquired, it became the only thing I listened to for at least a week.) Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE DRIFT — “SEER”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 202019
 

 

This coming Friday, November 22nd, the South African sludge metal band The Drift will release their third album, Seer, which forms the final installment in the Deluge trilogy that began with 2013’s Dreams of Deluge and 2015’s The Mountain Star. The new album is packed with ideas and diverse experiences, so much so that calling The Drift a sludge band is a great oversimplification, even if that label does accurately capture a part of their sound (but only a part).

The Drift sum up Seer as “the sound of introspection, with tracks ranging from claustrophobic and frenetic to open and expansive”, and that is accurate, but that too only scratches the surface of the broad spectrum of sounds and sensations that a trip through Seer reveals. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THIRD CHAMBER — “HARVESTING OUR DECAY”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 202019
 

 

Although Harvesting Our Decay is the debut EP by Calgary-based death metal band Third Chamber, this is another example of a band whose members have a long history in the underground scene, in this case having performed with numerous Calgary groups, including Culled, After Earth, Meddigo, False Flag, WAKE, Disciples of Power, Exit Strategy, and Razorwing. And as some of those names suggest, Third Chamber‘s line-up — drummer Dustin Hahn, guitarists Jamie McIsaac and Jay, bassist Russ Gauthier, and vocalist Shane Hawco — have brought elements of grindcore and hardcore into their death-dealing metal.

The result of their collaboration, as vividly revealed on Harvesting Our Decay, is music that’s explosively powerful, making ample use of pulverizing grooves, maniacal riffing, and hair-raising vocal ferocity, while also paying attention to tempo dynamics and incorporating an array of dark melodic flavors that help give the music a memorable character.

The band will release Harvesting Our Decay on November 22nd, but we’re giving you the chance to check out all 21 minutes of it today. Continue reading »

CATTLE DECAPITATION: “DEATH ATLAS”

 Album Reviews  12 Responses »
Nov 202019
 

 

(Andy Synn authored this review of the eagerly anticipated new album by Cattle Decapitation, which is set for release on November 29 by Metal Blade Records.)

As every amateur gambler knows, you never quit when you’re on a hot streak.

As every real gambler knows, however, hot streaks are an illusion, and it’s only the utterly naïve, or the foolhardy, who like to think that lady luck has, for some reason, taken a special interest in them.

Californian crushers Cattle Decapitation have been on their own little hot streak ever since 2009’s The Harvest Floor, with both the breakthrough/breakout release of Monolith of Inhumanity and it’s arguably even better follow-up, The Anthropocene Extinction, earning them a guaranteed place on pretty much every End of the Year list that mattered.

But what goes up must, inevitably, come down, and every bubble has to burst sometime.

So the question is, can Death Atlas continue the band’s winning ways, or is it time to cash out? Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: HUMAN SERPENT — “THE VACUITY”

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Nov 202019
 

 

(Here’s DGR’s review of a new two-song EP by the Greek band Human Serpent, which was released on November 18th.)

It wouldn’t be a black metal release if it didn’t have a flair for the dramatic, and the duo behind Greece’s Human Serpent are no different, describing their latest release — a two song EP entitled The Vacuity — as having been written during “the last days” of’ 2016 and 2018, and recorded at various points in “autumntime of 2017” and “wintertime of 2019”. It’s a simple turn of phrase that can easily be read as “the music for this was written during the last week of….”, but because it is black metal and in the case of Human Serpent, fiery and high-speed black metal, “the last days of…” begins to sound suitably apocalyptic, as if the world ended at the end of each of those two years.

Going by Human Serpent‘s prior discography the group would be more than happy to provide the soundtrack to such events. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GANONDORF — “ANCIENT RUINS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 192019
 

 

Not all bands or their recordings immediately spring forth fully formed like Minerva from the brow of Jupiter. The album we’re presenting today, for example, is the culmination of creative work that began 13 years ago in an ancient mountain village in the northwest of Sardinia. Then and there, Nicola Piras began writing music as a one-man project. Over the many years that followed, he searched for and finally found a stable line-up of fellow musicians, and together under the name Ganondorf they recorded this debut album, Ancient Ruins, which will be released by Third I Rex through its affiliate Imperatrix Mundi Records on November 30th, along with Slava Satan Records, Nothing Left Records, and LiveviL Records. Based on what we hear, we can only hope that this long-coming first step will be followed by many more.

Ganondorf’s style of black metal is often explosive and ravaging, ferocious and furious. At its foundation are Nicola Piras‘ blazing blastbeats, thunderous double-bass fusillades, titanic kitwork detonations, and rapidly somersaulting fills. But rather than rely entirely on turbocharged assaults, he mixes in a variety of neck-snapping rock rhythms that amplify the head-moving grooves that regularly surface in these songs. And with Piras‘ riveting drumwork (paired an equally fleet and fiery bass performance by Matteo Usai) as the music’s propulsion, guitarists Giovanni Murgia and Riccardo Chessa weave a changing array of seductive and shattering melodies, while Alessandro Ventura‘s scorching vocals amplify the songs’ intense emotional power. Continue reading »

STRIGOI: “ABANDON ALL FAITH”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 192019
 

 

(On November 22nd Nuclear Blast will release the debut album of the British band Strigoi, and today we presentt DGR’s review of the album.)

Gregor Mackintosh‘s newest project Strigoi is an interesting proposition: Even though his previous project Vallenfyre exists no more, having released three excellent albums and then neatly wrapping things up, Strigoi sees Greg Mackintosh once again reuniting with one of his Vallenfyre friends in order to release more doom-infused death metal, fully divorced from the gothic melodrama of Paradise Lost.

Abandon All Faith comes packed with music, weighing in at eleven songs and an intro track and all of it some of the weightiest and sometimes dirtiest death metal that the group could muster. If there were an award for crushing by sonic weight via guitar tone, Strigoi could easily find itself in the running, as the whole album is filled with cacophonous bellowing and hefty guitar riffs that make every song feel astronomically heavier than they otherwise would have been.

Ostensibly launched as a project for the crew to explore more facets of heavy metal music than what they felt they were able to do in Vallenfyre, Strigoi still keeps it pretty close to home on Abandon All Faith. It’s a huge album wherein the experimentation comes largely in the different atmosphere the band try to portray across their twelve songs, and although there is a strain of familiarity that runs throughout Abandon All Faith, hearing the group still manage to create a suffocatingly heavy brick of death metal remains an exciting experience. Continue reading »

OSSUAIRE: “PREMIERS CHANTS / DERNIER CHANTS”

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Nov 192019
 

 

(The Montréal black metal band Ossuaire released two related albums this year through Sepulchral Productions, one in April and one in October, and Andy Synn reviews both of them here.)

Imitation, so they say, is the sincerest form of flattery.

Whereas innovation is one of the prime forms of creativity.

In between these two poles, however, is iteration, and that’s where most artists ply their trade, building upon what has come before, taking bits and pieces of their influences for themselves.

This is particularly true in Black Metal, where the form of the music, the integral demands of shape and structure, play a decisive role in making it what it is. And while that doesn’t preclude bands from totally innovating on the concept, the truth is that there’s only so far you can go, so much you can innovate, before you stop playing Black Metal at all.

Ossuaire clearly know this, and know it well. And, as such, their music is not about breaking the mould or reinventing the wheel, but about striving to capture the purest essence of Black Metal in all its grimly grandiose, mercilessly melodic glory. Continue reading »

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

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 182019
 

 

At least within the realms of extreme metal, Iceland is probably best known these days for black metal, with that charred chalice being carried high by a surprisingly large number of bands (many with interlocking line-ups) for such a small nation. But other cauldrons of musical extremity boil within the stark, dramatic landscapes of that remarkable country, and we get the sense that even across genres, bands set standards for each other to meet and surmount, if they can. That may be one reason why Iceland’s musical output has been so consistently good, despite the relatively small population.

As evidence that black metal isn’t the only exceptional music coming out of Iceland these days, today we’re presenting a full stream of the self-titled debut album by a group called Vofa, who with this release should make a rapid ascent toward the higher plateaus of funeral doom — even though the music itself seems like a horrifying descent into madness.

We present this complete stream on the day of Vofa’s release by Funere (Armenia) and Exhumed Records (Ecuador), and so you won’t have to wait to pick it up. And you won’t have to guess about whether it’s worth having. Continue reading »

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