(Andy Synn delivers his third compilation of reviews this week which focus on new records by UK bands, and again presents three of them in this latest installment.)
The third (and final) of this week’s series of “Best of British” posts deals with three bands who are collectively becoming (or have already become) a fair bit more well-known and more famous (or infamous) than those artists from the previous two editions. Continue reading »
Much could be written (and has been written) about Ungoliant, the dark spider queen “from before the world” who played a role in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Silmarillion and was mentioned in The Lord of the Rings. Also known as Gloomweaver (because she was capable of generating impenetrable darkness), she gave birth to a race of giant spiders, and her own unremitting hunger was so great that she consumed herself.
With that bit of background, it becomes apparent from the music of the Ukrainian symphonic black metal band Ungoliantha why they based their name on that giant dark spider. One might find other clues to the music from the spooky cover art of their new EP, The Howl in the Waste — a collage of black cats, skulls, and Gothic spires. There is indeed an atmosphere of supernatural horror and terrible grandeur that pervades the EP, manifested in different ways across its five tracks — all of which we’re streaming today in this exclusive premiere. Continue reading »
(Sooner than anticipated, Andy Synn brings us yet another installment of this series, which focuses on reviews of new records by UK bands — and you’ll find three of those here.)
Remember how I said I had enough collected material for three separate “Best of British” columns (including the one I/we published on Monday)?
Well, I wasn’t lying, and today’s edition features three bands who, in all likelihood, should drum up a lot of interest from our readers.
In fact I’m hopeful that, if you like one of these bands, you’ll like the other two as well! Continue reading »
(We welcome guest contributor Evan Clark, who has written at a couple of other metal sites in the past, and whose first thoughts at NCS concern the debut album of Belzebubs, which was released on April 25th.)
Belzebubs is an interesting beast that owes some similarities to acts such as Metalocalypse or Ghost. The band is the real-world manifestation of a fictional band within a popular webcomic, all three sharing the same name. The webcomic plays out like a family-oriented newspaper strip, but with the added benefit of the central characters all being doused in a heavy dose of black metal chic. Belzebubs in our world maintains the face and act of the fictitious band, and has been deployed upon our world with its members anonymous.
The creator J.P. Ahonen seems to have hired well-known or at least competent metal musicians to write and coordinate material that could feasibly stem from the fictitious band. The mystery of who is actually performing on the record is quite intriguing, with many people suspecting members of Insomnium — the vocalists for the two bands sound eerily similar — yet the true wonder can be found from the fact that the album, in its current state, exists at all. Continue reading »
(DGR reviews, at length, the new album by the part-Swedish, part-American experimental death-grind band Ovaryrot, which was released on April 19th.)
We try our best to avoid swearing too much these days, but put politely, Ovaryrot’s latest album Non-Flesh Scarring is a fuckin’ mess.
Actually, without the help of the band themselves contacting us we never would’ve known that the followup to the group’s previous album, Suicide Ideation, had even happened. At the very least, given that Non-Flesh Scarring hit in April, the Metal-Archives page could use an update.
To be clear though, we use the phrase “fuckin’ mess” in as nice a way as “fuckin’ mess” can be used to describe an album, as Ovaryrot’s sound is a nightmarish hybrid of grind, death metal, and someone torturing the everliving hell out of some synths. Then the group add in a vocalist, because why wouldn’t you want to add to what is essentially a lo-fi destruction of sound? Continue reading »
“For fans of Deathspell Omega, Dodecahedron, Fleshgod Apocalypse“. I confess that when I saw those references in the promotional materials for the debut EP by Deorc Absis, I was a bit confused, but also more than a little intrigued. After listening to The Nothingness Transfiguration, the comparisons made more sense, but it’s still very difficult to find comparisons to this music.
The Nothingness Transfiguration is instrumentally intricate, technically extravagant, frequently unhinged in its ferocity, and just as frequently eerie and ethereal. It has an experimental, near-improvisational quality that proves to be mentally and emotionally discombobulating, and the connections that tie it together seem to be established almost subconsciously. In a word (though more words will come), it’s fascinating.
Fortunately, because the music is difficult to pin down in words, we have an excerpt from the EP that you can stream today. Bear in mind that “Stasis” isn’t really a separate and distinct track, but just the first four minutes of a single composition that lasts nearly 14 minutes. And what a wild 14-minute trip it is. Continue reading »
(In a new episode of this occasional series, Andy Synn again combines reviews of releases by bands from the UK, with three new offerings on tap today.)
So far this year I’ve barely touched upon the musical output of my homeland, barring a single edition of “The Best of British” back in February, but, wouldn’t you know it, I’ve now built up enough of a backlog that I have enough potential candidates to fill not only this column but another two additional ones as well.
At some point I’ll get them all written up and reviewed… at some point… but for now let’s begin with three shorter, but still rather spiffing, releases from Roots Entwined, Subservience, and Watchcries. Continue reading »
(This is DGR’s review of the new album by the Italian juggernauts Fleshgod Apocalypse, which will be released on May 24th via Nuclear Blast Records.)
At this point in their career every Fleshgod Apocalypse release has moved beyond mere album and into ‘spectacle’ territory, and their newest record, Veleno, proves no different. To repeat a point we’ve been guilty of raising a couple of times now, Fleshgod Apocalypse have made a career out of being the ‘most’. Oracles was their most straightforward brutal death disc — though it’s hard to deny the sheer power in the opening song “In Honour Of Reason” as it transitions from orchestral piece into death metal hurricane. Agony had the most bombast in terms of speed, Labyrinth tried to be the most ‘everything’ and wound up being the loudest amongst the bands discography, and — with Veleno included — King was probably the most orchestral the band have ever become to date.
But, if Veleno follows suit with its predecessors, where does that leave it within a collective that already defines nearly every element of the Fleshgod Apocalypse sound? Well, that’s the interesting part, because when you really nail it down, Veleno could be best described as Fleshgod Apocalypse‘s most carefully crafted spectacle to date. Continue reading »
(This is Todd Manning‘s review of the new album by the Australian band Kollaps, which was released on May 3rd by Cold Spring Records.)
Kollaps are an Australian Post-Industrial trio deep-diving into the depths of sonic extremity on their second album Mechanical Christ, out now on Cold Spring Records. Not unlike their peers in this rather small niche in Extreme music, Kollaps take the listener on a harrowing journey through utter darkness and despondency, a place where guitar riffs are thrown out and replaced by sledgehammer percussion and waves of abrasive distortion.
The term Post-Industrial, used to describe Kollaps, is an interesting choice. Their sound in many ways is a return to the roots of Industrial Music. It is not hard to hear Throbbing Gristle, Test Dept., and Einstürzende Neubauten in the Sturm und Drang on Mechanical Christ, yet also present are more modern elements taken from Noise and Drone, and the effect is remarkably unsettling. Continue reading »
(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by the Norwegian black metal band Kampfar, which will be released on May 3rd by Indie Recordings.)
Metal is, perhaps more than any other genre I can think of, a style of music built around its own mythology.
The bands and artists whom we love (or loathe) become our heroes, and our villains, our gods, and our demons, often all at the same time, while certain places – the fetid swamps of Florida, the frozen mountains of Norway, the steel and smoke of Northern England – become invested with near-mythic significance of their own, giving birth to their own legends and lore and traditions.
Black Metal in particular is rich in its own particular brand of folklore and fairy tale – much of it drenched in the blood and sweat of its progenitors – to the point where it sometimes seems like the music plays second fiddle to the myths surrounding it.
But not with Kampfar. And not on Ofidians Manifest. Continue reading »