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 »

ABNORMALITY: “SOCIOPATHIC CONSTRUCTS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 142019
 

 

(Here’s DGR’s review of the new album by Abnormality, which was released by Metal Blade Records on May 10th.)

The blindingly-fast, whirlwind death metal crew Abnormality’s newest album Sociopathic Constructs starts off on an interesting note if you’re a longtime fan, with an opening song entitled “Monarch Alpha” — recalling the days of the group’s song “Monarch Omega”, which began the album Contaminating The Hivemind way back in the yonder days of 2012.

That earlier song could easily bore its way into your skull due to the repeated “MONARCH OMEGA” roar that tore its way through the track. Bringing up the spectre of that song and starting the new one in a very similar manner of going zero-to-one-hundred in the span of .5 seconds (not unlike other releases this year) makes it so that the two are tied in together. In much the same way that Massachusetts-based Abnormality have mastered the art of the frighteningly technical/caveman-stupid branch of death metal, so too does “Monarch Alpha”, an addition to an already vast collection of headspinningly-fast death metal songs. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MORDBRAND — “DÖDEN / EFTER DÖDEN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 132019
 

 

Gustaf Fröding, who died in 1911, is considered “one of the greatest poets of verse that Sweden has ever produced”. In his own life he struggled with alcoholism and mental illness, and according to the same source just quoted, “His poetry combines formal virtuosity with a sympathy for the ordinary, the neglected and the down-trodden, sometimes written with his own dialect. It is highly musical and lends itself to musical setting….”

While musical adaptations of Fröding’s verse have been wide-ranging, the range is even wider now because the Swedish death metal band Mordbrand have made two of Fröding’s poems the lyrical subject of songs that will be released digitally and in a 7″ vinyl format on May 15th, via De:Nihil Records — and today it’s our pleasure to present streams of both tracks: “Döden” and “Efter Döden“. Continue reading »

ULVER: “DRONE ACTIVITY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
May 132019
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Ulver, which they released two days ago)

A long time ago, in the distant land of Norway, a band was born.

Their name was Ulver, and though they made their start (and their mark) in the Black Metal scene it was clear very early on that they were a little different from their brothers.

No one at the time, of course, could have predicted the weird and wonderful places that their career would take them, but one thing has always been certain about the band’s music… no matter what they turn their minds towards it always results in something fascinating taking shape.

And it’s this endless fascination with their work – always compelling, sometimes frustrating, yet never quite what it seems to be – which keeps us here at NCS listening to and writing about Ulver regardless of how far their sound has strayed from our usual remit.

As long as they keep making music which inspires us to write about it, we’re going to keep doing so. Continue reading »

GOURD: “MOULDERING ABERRATIONS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 102019
 

 

With this review I’m making amends as well as a recommendation. Every year I encounter dozens of new records I wish I had time to write about, and often even intend to write about, but nevertheless fail to mention. In 2016 one of those was a self-titled EP by the Irish duo Gourd, a mountainously heavy and monumentally disturbing creation whose substantial run-time not only called into question Gourd’s classification of the release as an EP but also threatened the long-term well-being of anyone who listened to it.

I intended to write about Gourd, and should have, but Cursed Monk Records‘ impending release of a new Gourd EP, Moldering Aberrations, affords a chance for personal redemption. In one fell swoop I get to insist that you listen to that 2016 record AND that you check out this new one at the earliest opportunity, especially if there’s just too damned much happiness in your life. Continue reading »

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