AN A-Z OF EVERYTHING WE’VE MISSED

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Oct 302018
 

 

(Despite what the title of this post says, Andy Synn hasn’t managed to review every fine 2018 album and EP we’ve heretofore failed to write about, but he does catch up with more than two dozen of them.)

While lots of blogs/zines are already (or soon will be) switching their focus away from covering new releases and towards consolidating their annual “Best Of…” lists, here on NCS island we’re still doing our very best to bring as many new (and some not so new) albums/artists to your attention as possible.

Of course the truism that “there’s simply too much music out there” remains as painfully accurate as ever, and it pains me to admit that I/we simply can’t cover all the releases we want to, in the depth we want to, no matter how hard we try.

So consider this article a voluntary mea culpa acknowledging our limitations and a (probably futile) attempt to make amends a little bit to all the bands and artists who we may have missed or ignored over the last several months, as well as to shine a light on a couple of upcoming releases you’ll probably want to keep your eyes/ears open for. Continue reading »

CERTAINLY DEMENTED: “INHALING THE FRAGRANCES OF INSANITY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Oct 292018
 

 

(Vonlughlio prepared this review of the new album by Certainly Demented, which will be released on November 15th by the Russian label Lord of the Sick Recordings.)

For me this year in Brutal Death Metal has been another good one. I’ve found new bands, and more familiar ones have released new material that’s been better that their previous efforts. In my last appearance at NCS my small write-up was for a band called Insidious Squelching Penetration that I recently discovered and just fell in love with at first listen, and I mention that because I’m now turning to another band that came out of nowhere to take over my soul.

The band is Certainly Demented (and they certainly are), with their debut album Inhaling The Fragances of Insanity, to be released via Lord of the Sick Recordings this November 15th. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: EZKATON AND CANTIQUE LÉPREUX

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Oct 282018
 

 

I’m in the midst of a 4-day vacation in Las Vegas with my spouse and her sister and sister’s husband. Blogging has not been on the menu of activities. Getting more than about 4 hours of sleep a night hasn’t been on the menu either.

I did manage to extricate myself from one outing this morning, but spent an hour on the phone with internet support trying to get good enough wi-fi in the hotel room to stream music. Long story short: my time alone is now about to run out, and so this edition of SHADES OF BLACK is going to be shorter than usual.

EZKATON

In April of this year I came across a spellbinder of a song from the debut album of this Ukrainian black metal band, and quickly showered it with praise. Later, I discovered that the album as a whole (Plague for the Empires: Time) was also really powerful. And now Ezkaton will soon be releasing a new EP. Continue reading »

DEATH RITUALS: SULPHUR AEON, HOUSE OF ATREUS, UNDERGANG, EVULSE, RESUMED, BLOOD OF THE WOLF

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  14 Responses »
Oct 252018
 

 

“It’s death metal” doesn’t really tell you very much, which is why fans of extreme music long ago began inventing an ever-expanding, increasingly-hyphenated roster of sub-genres. I suppose one of those is “ritualistic death metal”, a kind of phrase that’s difficult to define but you sort of know it when you hear it… sort of. However, my use of the label “Death Rituals” for occasional posts like this one isn’t really intended to describe the style of music, it’s just a short-hand preview of the fact that I’ve decided to devote a round-up of new music to different styles of death metal, and that’s what you’ll find below.

SULPHUR AEON

I’ll go out on a limb and assert that Sulphur Aeon’s Swallowed By the Ocean’s Tide was one of the most explosive death metal debuts of the last 10 years. It didn’t hurt that the cover art by Ola Larsson was equally attention-grabbing. Together, the art and the music vaulted this German band onto the radar screens of fans and critics across the metal-listening parts of the globe in strikingly impressive fashion, and they cemented their reputation with 2015’s Gateway to the Antisphere. Now Sulphur Aeon and Ola Larsson have joined forces again for the band’s third album, The Scythe of Cosmic Chaos. Continue reading »

CRYPTOPSY – “THE BOOK OF SUFFERING: TOME II”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 242018
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new EP by Cryptopsy, which is set to drop this Friday, October 26th.)

So I didn’t intend for this week to be some sort of “Seven Days of Tech Death”-style celebration, but considering that on Saturday I published an interview with James Malone from Arsis, on Monday my reviews of the new Beyond Creation and Gorod albums went up, and I already have a suitably tech-tastic edition of The Synn Report lined up for Friday… well, it looks like things have ended up that way regardless.

So, I thought to myself, why not stick with this trend and pen a few thoughts about the soon-to-be-released new EP from those stalwart sons of Canadian darkness, Cryptopsy? Continue reading »

A(NOTHER) TALE OF TWO ALBUMS: BEYOND CREATION AND GOROD

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Oct 222018
 

 

(Andy Synn has packaged two reviews into this post, addressing the new albums of Beyond Creation, released by Season of Mist on October 12th, and of Gorod, which was released on October 19th through OverPowered Records.)

When I initially wrote and published “A Tale of Two Albums”, comparing and contrasting the most recent Arsis and Revocation records, I had absolutely no intention of ever writing a sequel or follow-up.

However, in conversation with my friends/bandmates recently we got to chatting about the new Beyond Creation and Gorod releases, and I realised that these two would also make great fodder for a co-feature of their own, not only because both bands are going to be on tour together very soon, but also because both Algorythm and Aethra find their respective creators making an effort to expand and redefine their sound… although one of the two albums is certainly more successful than the other in this regard. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): KRIEGSMASCHINE — “APOCALYPTICISTS”

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Oct 212018
 

 

I slept much later than usual this morning, and to compound the problems that created for my NCS duties, I had barely started writing today’s SHADES OF BLACK column before bedding down for the night, though I had at least finished the job of picking what I wanted to write about. And then when I finally did rouse myself from what seemed like a deep hibernation and had inhaled a gallon of coffee, I decided to take a quick peak at Facebook before turning back to today’s column.

And the first thing I saw was a pair of messages from two generous sources of musical recommendations, starkweather’s Rennie and my Serbian acquaintance Miloš, both of whom were pointing me to a big surprise that did far more to set my nerve endings alight that all that coffee I had poured into myself: Without warning, No Solace released a new Kriegsmaschine album today. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: VOIDHAVEN — “VOIDHAVEN”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Oct 192018
 

 

Today is the release date (through Solitude Productions) for the debut EP, self-titled, of the German band Voidhaven, whose line-up includes members of Crimson Swan and Ophis — and it proves to be a masterful interweaving of traditional doom metal and doom-death that plumbs depths of hopelessness and misery yet has the capacity to send the heart soaring.

Voidhaven is now available for listening through YouTube and Bandcamp streams that we can share with you. It consists of two songs of approximately nine minutes apiece — long enough to cast powerful and lingering spells, but not too long, never risking a fall into monotony. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GATHERING DARKNESS — “THE INEXORABLE END”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 192018
 

 

It’s probably a common phenomenon among metal fans to make guesses about a band’s musical genre based on their choice of name. The name Gathering Darkness, for example, might suggest flavors of doom, and when the band first formed 20 years ago, their focus was indeed on a doom-drenched variant of death metal, as reflected in their first demos. But as the years passed, the sound changed, and the suggestion of a dark, atmospheric, doom-centric focus which the name might still convey is no longer reliable.

As the interests of this Spanish band evolved, the focus turned to brutal death metal, but that genre label might itself be a misleading indicator of what the group have created for their new EP, The Inexorable End, which is being released on October 21st in celebration of their 20th anniversary, and which we’re presenting in a full stream today. Continue reading »

UN: “SENTIMENT”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Oct 192018
 

 

(These are Grant Skelton‘s thoughts about the remarkable new album by the Seattle-based funeral doom band Un, which is out now via Translation Loss Records, along with thoughts by vocalist/guitarist Monte Mccleery.)

In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

“What have we in common with the rose-bud, which trembleth because a drop of dew hath formed upon it?”

A rose is a floral archetype. For centuries it’s been associated with romance, youth, and sensuality. Furthermore, it represents a paradox — a juxtaposition of beauty and pain. A rose is beautiful to behold with the eye, but painful to hold with the hand. In Nietzsche’s metaphor, the rose trembles. It trembles because it has been acted upon by precipitation. By the vicissitudes of nature. By the weight of something it needs to survive. While precipitation is a source of nourishment, an excess of it can be fatal to the rose. Continue reading »

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