CALL OF THE VOID: “BURIED IN LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 222019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Denver’s Call of the Void, which was released on May 10th by Translation Loss Records.)

For the sake of simplicity we often tend to think of the Metal scene as being split between the “underground” and the “mainstream”. But, of course, nothing is that simple.

The “underground” scene is itself separated into several distinct strata, from the upper echelons where the various “big” names live, well-known to all of us, but still practically invisible to the “mainstream” audience, all the way down into the deepest, darkest, dankest pits of squalling, sub-musical noise that only a handful of people are ever likely to hear… and everything in between.

And while Call of the Void have been hovering on the brink of breaking through to the wider underground for a while now, Buried In Light looks set to elevate them to a whole new level entirely. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): BLACK CRUCIFIXION — “LIGHTLESS VIOLENT CHAOS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
May 212019
 

 

In just about every review of an album by Black Crucifixion there seems to be an obligatory history lesson, and there will be one here too, because in the case of this band the historical context may actually matter. And there are other reasons to appreciate their history, which we’ll come to.

At the same time, the road traveled by this band has led them to a very different place than where they began in their songcraft almost 30 years ago, as it has in the case of such other early black metal stalwarts as Ulver, Satyricon, Ihsahn, Tom G Warrior in his Triptykon days, Enslaved, and Carl-Michael Eide under the banner of Virus. What doesn’t seem to have changed is Black Crucifixion‘s devotion to the devil. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HORNWOOD FELL — “DAMNO LUMINA NOCTE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  4 Responses »
May 202019
 

Every song on Hornwood Fell‘s new album Damno Lumina Nocte is named “Vulnera” — the Latin word for “wound” (accompanied by Roman numerals I – VII) — every one of them a projection of “dark landscapes, discomforts, and open wounds of the society we live in”. Every one of them is a cavalcade of disturbances, a mind-warping amalgam of dissonance and derangement that seems to embody mental fracturing and emotional splintering. It is as if the band found Pandora’s Box, and without hesitation opened it, recording the sounds of all the evils within as they escaped in a mad rush of freakish abandon.

This is not easy listening. The music is persistently abrasive and frequently cacophonous. There are twisted melodic motifs and rhythmic patterns that appear often enough to stitch the songs together, often in physically compulsive ways, but things change unpredictably, and veer so sharply and so often that it’s hard for a listener to maintain any balance — like trying to walk a high tightrope that’s being plucked (rapidly) by giant fingers.

It is also, perhaps perversely, an utterly fascinating experience. There is a mad genius at work within these tracks (two of them, actually), and the songs are so weirdly transfixing that the minutes speed by like starlings in flight. Looking away from these deep, festering wounds turns out to be very difficult. Continue reading »

RAMMSTEIN: “RAMMSTEIN”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
May 202019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the first album in 10 years by Rammstein, which was released on May 17th.)

It seems like every year, if not every six months, the Metal Media ™ is overwhelmed with a glut of articles declaiming the imminent “death” of the scene, and asking “who will be the next Metallica?”

Yet amidst all the pontificating, prognosticating, and populist predictions – will it be Trivium (no, despite their best efforts), will it be Slipknot (I hope not), will it be Five Finger Death Punch (dear god no…) – one name seems consistently omitted and overlooked, despite the fact that they’re already quite capable of filling arenas and selling umpteen records without even breaking a sweat.

That band, as the more astute of you might already have guessed, is Rammstein. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: MESHUGGAH AND THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER (LIVE IN ATLANTA, MAY 6, 2019)

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
May 172019
 

 

(Our Atlanta-Based contributor Tør attended the performance of Meshuggah and The Black Dahlia Murder on May 6th at Buckhead Theater, and provided us with these impressions and many of his photos of the performances, most of which follow the text below.)

It is a rather peculiar scene: a bunch of metal fans lined up on the sidewalk of one the trendiest parts of the city waiting for Meshuggah and The Black Dahlia Murder to perform. The Buckhead Theater is a wonderful venue for all kinds of live music and I am glad I can finally catch a show there for the first time after six years of living in Atlanta. Continue reading »

INTER ARMA: “SULPHUR ENGLISH”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 162019
 

 

(This is Evan Clark‘s review of the new album by Virginia’s Inter Arma, which was released by Relapse Records on April 12th.)

There are few pleasures like that of rediscovering a beloved band through a new release. In 2016 I discovered Inter Arma through their then-new album Paradise Gallows and I was quickly swayed and enamored with their unique take on blackened metal. I am remiss to say that I did not spend much time digging into their back catalog, but that may have to change. With Sulphur English, the band’s fourth full-length, the Virginian quintet return to bludgeon listeners with another sample of dour, unhinged, and apocalyptic metal. Precision, beauty, and the juxtaposition of those two traits with sheer destruction were the defining qualities of that earlier record. On Sulphur English, the band have taken those qualities to new levels, and have left a trail of misery in their wake. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LUX NIGRUM — “BURNING THE ETERNAL RETURN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
May 162019
 

 

It’s fair to say that most of our premieres, even for genuinely underground bands who are seeking neither fame nor fortune, are arranged by PR agents and labels — but certainly not all. Our mission is only to spread the word about metal that makes a strong and positive impression, music that moves us and that we think might move you, regardless of how we learn about it. Here is an example of that, which came our way via a message from the band itself, and which we then sought permission to premiere.

The band is Lux Nigrum (“black light”), which is the work of Chilean solo artist Azerate, aided by session drummers. On this new EP, Burning the Eternal Return, the drums were performed (with extraordinary skill) by Holycaust, the man behind the Chlean black/thrash band Morbid Holocaust. Conceptually, the EP is about “the destruction of the cosmic order imposed by false gods through the sacrifice of the Ouroboros (when you can recognize it’s representation as a tyrannical form of eternal emptiness and absurd repression) putting an end to the cycle of life and death”, and thus it concerns “rejecting the life given (not denying it) and dissolving the ego that binds us in an earthly way, to accept the return to the Primordial Chaos”. Continue reading »

A TRIO OF REVIEWS: ADVENT SORROW / IRON FLESH / WARFORGED

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 162019
 

 

I was chatting with DGR recently (yes, we do in fact keep in touch outside of the site) and we both agreed that we’ve now reached that point of the year (and it comes every year) where our list of potential/possible reviews has become so massive and unwieldy that we’re just going to have to cut our losses, accept that some of the stuff we’d dearly love to write about isn’t going to get covered, and focus instead on doing our best for those artists/albums which we do get a chance to write about.

So, in that spirit, here are three new albums, one from an old favourite, one from a current favourite, and one from a potential new favourite, all of whom are well worth checking out if you haven’t done so already. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE — ANTAGONY’S “KIP AND MITCH” — AND A REVIEW OF “ASHES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
May 152019
 

 

It’s not uncommon for bands and labels to re-release older records. It’s less common, but still not unheard-of, for bands to re-record older songs in a way that burnishes their sound or updates them in other ways. Sometimes these things work, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes die-hard fans will grab up re-releases and re-recordings for the sake of having a complete collection, or because they’re so die-hard that they’ll reflexively seize on anything their idols might do, even if the music sounds like a relic of a lost age. For more discerning and less slavish listeners, whether such projects are worth the time (and money) depends on how well the music has held up over the passing years.

The Bay Area band Antagony, who carved their place in the history books of metal over the decade from 1999 to 2009, have embarked on just such a revival project. Older, wiser, and (it must be said) more skilled as performers, the original line-up has come back together again after a decade spent in other projects since Antagony’s disbanding. On their new album Ashes, they’ve re-recorded a selection of tracks that all date back to demos and EPs released from 1998-2000, plus one new song that shares the title of the album. Having listened to the album (which will be released on May 24th), the verdict for this writer isn’t a close call: This is one of those revival projects that is an extravagant success. Continue reading »

AMON AMARTH: “BERSERKER”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 152019
 

 

(This is DGR’s review of Amon Amarth‘s 11th album, which was released by Metal Blade Records on May 3rd.)

Amon Amarth are fun when Amon Amarth get “weird” around the fringes of their music.

Well, let’s walk that back a bit, since there’s a lot of power in those quotation marks around weird. It’s not weird in the usual sense, as Amon Amarth remain fairly conventional, and hew pretty closely to all of the traits that make them recognizable, on their latest album Berserker. They are one of the trope vanguards of the term ‘shuffle band’, in that their music has found such a consistent bar of quality that you don’t really need to do full-album runs any more. You can throw their whole discography onto a playlist, shuffle it up, and still have a good time.

That happens to a lot of bands when they strike upon a sound that they then make their own, and Amon Amarth did that sooo long ago — about the time of Fate Of Norns and With Oden On Our Side — and since then their discography has felt like iterations upon that particular formula. Huge and epic for Twilight Of The Thundergod, surprisingly death metal for Surtur Rising, weirdly experimental on the fringes of their sound on Deceiver Of The Gods, and a big old block of a lot of the ‘same’ on the concept album – about Vikings – that was Berserker’s immediate predecessor, Jomsviking. Continue reading »

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