(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Conforza from New Hampshire, U.S.).
Isn’t it great when you stumble across a new, hitherto unheard, band, totally out of the blue?
Case in point, resurrected and reformatted New Hampshire metallers Conforza released their brand-new album, the aptly-titled Revival, last week and I’ve been listening to it pretty much non-stop ever since. Continue reading »
I must begin with Orso‘s video for the song “Mitraillette“. I intended to blurt about it as soon as I saw it almost three weeks ago, but learned soon after that we would be hosting the premiere today of Orso‘s new album, Paninoteca, so I held my tongue (barely), with pincers. Now my tongue can wag.
In watching the video I had a difficult time concentrating on the music — not that you really need to concentrate, since you can feel the music quite powerfully in your core, even without focusing your mind — because of the video’s strange combination of humor, creepiness, and the ability to induce salivation. For several minutes I couldn’t quite figure out why it was making me uneasy, watching Orso‘s band members intently devour sandwiches, and then it hit me that their heads don’t move… and they have no ears, or at least none that you can see. Continue reading »
(Here’s DGR’s review of the new album by the Italian extreme metal band Hiss From the Moat, which was released by Salem Rose Music and M-Theory Audio on February 22nd, and features cover artwork by Stefano Bonora.)
The family tree of the hyper-blasting death metal groups from Italy is a densely populated series of branches that seem to spiral every outwards with a tremendous number of offshoots and tied-together snarls that could make fractal patterns jealous.
This specific region and genre have found more musicians crossing paths than might even be initially obvious. Hiss From The Moat‘s branch of the tree has always been a strange outlier, taking their genre’s penchant for near-relentless and precise brutal death metal and combining it with the heavy atmospherics and low-tuned guitar batterings of blackened death metal — like a latter day Hour Of Penance crashing headlong into Apostasy/Evangelion-era Behemoth. Continue reading »
(This is Vonlughlio’s review of the debut album by the North Carolina death metal band Putrefying Cadaverment, which will be released on April 14th by Sevared Records.)
It’s been a few weeks since my last write-up, and what a great way to break the silence — by reviewing the debut album of North Carolina’s Putrefying Cadaverment, entitled Indiscriminate Butchery, to be released via Sevared Records.
Before this, the band only released two demos and one EP named Necrosadistic Defilement before going on a lengthy hiatus. They were more slam/BDM oriented and had good riffs, but although the overall idea was interesting I had mixed feelings about the earlier music. Continue reading »
(In this post Todd Manning reviews the new album by Indiana’s Conjurer, which will be released on April 5th, and introduces our premiere of a song from the album.)
There is a tendency in the world of Metal to try to overload every available inch of sonic space with brutality. It’s an understandable and often effective approach, but at times, bands who utilize a more stripped-down strategy are equally capable of blowing the listener’s mind and ears. It is this kind of sense of refinement that is evident in spades on the new album Sigils by Indianapolis-based Sludge/Doom quintet Conjurer.
For anyone familiar with their debut, Old World Ritual, their latest is not a radical departure from the sound they established there, but is a logical and powerful step forward. Continue reading »
(On March 27th our Atlanta-based contributor Tør made his way to The Masquerade venue to take in performances by Aenimus, Fleshgod Apocalypse, and Hypocrisy as part of their ongoing national tour. He sent us this report, along with a large batch of his own excellent photos from the show. For a full list of remaining dates on the tour, go here.)
I walk in late and it’s already happening. Openers Aenimus have just taken the stage and are blazing through their set. The crowd is into it: with every riff, the front-row crowd inches closer to the stage monitors. I stand on the side and enjoy the gig -— I like what I’m hearing. The metalcore-tinged proggy riffs take me to a place I’ve been to before but can’t quite recall. I’ve liked what I’ve heard of the new album, Dreamcatcher (Nuclear Blast) so far, and the band doesn’t disappoint live. Despite the solid start to the night, nothing prepares me for what is to come soon. Continue reading »
(Here’s DGR’s review of the new EP by Sweden’s Axis of Despair, which was released in February.)
While a lot of reviews so far this year have been the result of my waiting to see how an album sits with me post-release, or the more common reason of playing desperate catch-up with all the stuff I want to write about, the release of Axis Of Despair‘s latest EP And The Machine Rolls On — with Selfmadegod handling black and pink vinyls of the release — is one that legitimately just flew under our radar.
Released in early February, And The Machine Rolls On contains another six songs of the musical spasm that Axis Of Despair call their branch of grind. The group recorded it during the sessions for last year’s Contempt For Man release, and it runs about nine minutes in length. Continue reading »
Akrotheism
(Andy Synn prepared the following reviews for six new albums from the realms of black metal.)
It’s already the first of April and, somehow, I am already about six months behind in my reviews for 2019.
To try and address this problem, this week I’m going to be grouping together a bunch of different bands/albums to try and simultaneously clear some of this backlog AND get the word out about a few new (or relatively new) releases I think you all need to hear.
So let’s begin with six (well, five and a half) examples of the black (Metal) arts, shall we? Continue reading »
We welcome the return of Bob Malmström to our putrid site! It may be April Fool’s Day, but that’s no joke. They really do have a new EP ready for release on April 5th (the name of which is Länge Leve) and we really do have a complete stream of it to share with you today.
Now, I do realize that, instead of applauding, the first reaction of many of you will be “Bob who?” After all, a long three years have passed since we last devoted attention to the band. But they are hardly newcomers to NCS, even though their music isn’t always right in our wheelhouse. In fact, hosting today’s premiere is something of a reunion, like the visit of cousins you haven’t seen in a long time, who set your house on fire the last time they came around. Continue reading »
(This is DGR‘s review of the new album by the German death metal band Deserted Fear, which was released by Century Media in February.)
Deserted Fear sound absolutely massive on their fourth album, Drowned By Humanity. Having released discs at a fairly steady clip – one every two years for the most part – the Deserted Fear crew have had plenty of opportunities to iterate and expand upon their sound – and also to keep to the black-and-white-skulls motif that makes up a majority of their album artwork.
They have found themselves lying somewhere in the realm of a slightly more melodeath-leaning Kataklysm, with an album (to repeat) written to sound massive. Drowned By Humanity is built around big riffs, big grooves, and big hooks, making its forty-some-odd minutes feel like a hell of a lot longer. Continue reading »