AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TYRANT — “THE EXISTENTIAL REVERSAL”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jun 142018
 

 

In the space of only three songs the Canadian quintet Tyrant provide a skull-cracking, blood-rushing, brain-twisting experience on their new EP, The Existential Reversal. Amalgamating aspects of melodic death metal, thrash, and groove, the band have created tracks that are physically arresting and exotic, both brutish and technically nimble, loaded with juicy riffs and solos, and fueled with furious energy. And to make the results even more impressive, the EP is a DIY production — and one that succeeds in delivering explosive sonic power.

The EP will be released tomorrow (June 15th), but we have a full stream of all three songs from the EP for you to enjoy today. Continue reading »

LACHRYMOSE: “THE UNSEEN”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  No Responses »
Jun 122018
 

 

(Vasilis Xenopoulos, a guest writer from Greece who has contributed to NCS in the past, rejoins us with this review of the new EP by the Greek band Lachrymose, which was released in May and is an exception to the “rule” in our site’s title.)

Doom metal and tragedy are intertwined. The music, slow and heavy, leads gradually towards redemption and serves as a means for the unfolding of the stories of the pain and woes of man. Doom metal is a dance, a bleak and sorrowful waltz that sings of the suffering of man while at times praises the spirit of revolt and the pursuit of salvation.

In 2015 Lachrymose released the story of a witch who was accused and sentenced to the pyre for the crime of defiance against the dogma of religion. Carpe Noctum is doom metal that brings to mind the aesthetics of Paradise Lost in the times of Gothic and Icon. Through their music we follow her journey, as it is performed by vocalist Hel, from life to death and her return from the dead by a necromancer’s ritual.

But something went terribly wrong. When the thin veil between the living and the dead opened, vengeful spirits passed through and got inside her now living body. Her mind remained in the medium world, between the living and the dead, where everything and nothing is true, where spirits dwell in the fog of the underworld. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): GOAT DISCIPLE — “WOLFCULT DOMINATION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jun 112018
 

 

In April when I came across the first two tracks released from Wolfcult Domination, the debut EP by Salt Lake City’s Goat Disciple, I wrote: “You will read that the band’s music is war metal, and it is indeed a rapacious hybrid of black and death metal worthy of a name like Goat Disciple — but it’s so much more multifaceted, and executed with so much more technical acumen and creative exuberance, than most offerings in that bloody field that the ‘war metal’ label seems inadequate. At a minimum, if these two songs are a reliable indicator of the EP as a whole, it should vault them into the upper echelons of the field. And I don’t say that lightly.”

It turns out that those first two songs — “Oreb Zaraq” and “Mammon” — were rock-solid indicators indeed. The EP as a whole is a stunningly strong debut, all four tracks abundantly proving that Goat Disciple’s talents go beyond a capacity to engage in breathtaking musical slaughter (though they’re certainly very good at that, too). And thus we’re very happy to present a full stream of the EP in advance of its June 15 release by Blood Harvest Records and Helter Skelter Productions. Continue reading »

OTHER VOICES: SIX NOISES ON BRIDGE BURNER

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jun 112018
 

 

We make a valiant effort to write about all or part of as many good new releases as we can each year, but despite our best efforts we’re not able to devote attention to everything we enjoy. Our cadre of regular and irregular writers is small in number, and since NCS is a labor of lust rather than an actual job or business, we must occasionally devote time to distractions such as paying work, loved ones, food, water, trips to the toilet, and sleep. I would say “we’re only human”, but of course you know we’re superhuman, just not yet godlike.

Given the unavoidable constrictions on our time and attention spans, I’ve decided (in my capacity as benevolent dictator in charge of what gets posted at NCS) that we should start sharing what people who toil at other metal forums have to say about releases we’ve neglected. This “Other Voices” series won’t necessarily happen on a regular basis, and perhaps not even weekly, but I do mean to keep it going.

To inaugurate the series I’m turning to a review penned by New Zealand-based writer Craig Hayes, who has enriched NCS with his reviews in the past but whose main outlet is his excellent blog Six Noises, where he recently posted a review of the new album by Bridge Burner, which was released on May 31. To read all of it (as you should), go HERE. What follows are excerpts, along with a stream of the music. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: FUNERAL MIST, GAEREA, VILKACIS, TURIA, ABIGAIL

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  21 Responses »
Jun 102018
 

 

As you can see, I’m resuming this column after failing to get it done the last two Sundays due to other commitments. As a result of the hiatus I’m even more awash than usual in new music from the black realms. So much to choose from… and so perhaps there’s an even greater element of randomness in these choices than usual as well.

FUNERAL MIST

This solo project of the man who goes by Arioch here (and Mortuus when he fronts Marduk) has a habit of surprising people. After a trio of demos and an EP between ’95 and ’98, five years passed and then the Salvation debut album appeared — a record that a great many people still swear by. Six more years passed, and then Funeral Mist released Maranatha without warning. As I recall, it garnered a more mixed response than the widespread praise provoked by Salvation, but I’m one of those who thoroughly enjoyed it. And then so many years passed with nothing new that most fans probably concluded, sadly, that Arioch had laid Funeral Mist to rest, permanently.

Surprise! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEATH PORTAL STUDIO SAMPLER 2018

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 082018
 

 

Persistent followers of our putrid site will recognize the name Death Portal Studio, as we’ve written multiple times about music from this Colorado label’s releases, which range from black and death metal to ambient and noise. To help spread the word about Death Portal and to expose more listeners to the spectrum of sounds represented by its array of releases, today we’re presenting the premiere of a new Death Portal sampler, which is now available for digital download with a “name your own price” option.

The sampler, prepared with the assistance of Hidden Hand Extreme Music Marketing, consists of 11 diverse, globe-spanning tracks from Gôr Mörgûl, Satarial, Hak-ed Damm, Sar Isatum, Chaoscraft, Sarcophagus, Sereignos, Zardens, Thrymheym, Striborg, and Aetranok. Continue reading »

MYLINGAR: “DÖDA DRÖMMAR”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Jun 072018
 

 

The 2016 debut EP by the mysterious Swedish band Mylingar, Döda Vägar, was a nightmarish hybrid of black and death metal that seemed designed with the objective of inflicting torment and terror on a thermonuclear scale, igniting one violent hurricane of hate after another, each song ravaging the listener’s head with horrendous and even stupefying power while managing to provide unsettling changes of mood and gripping grooves to latch onto as handholds in these storms of sound.

A paradoxical combination of eagerness and fear gripped me upon learning that Mylingar had completed a debut album, and today it has been released through a conspiracy between Amor Fati Productions and Vigor Deconstruct/Fallen Empire Records. The name of the album is Döda Drömmar. How does it measure up against that frighteningly powerful first EP? Continue reading »

FRACTAL GATES: “THE LIGHT THAT SHINES”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jun 052018
 

 

(This is DGR’s review of the new album by Fractal Gates, which was released on May 12th through Naturmacht Productions.)

Five years between discs is on the long end of the “should I just stop checking to see if this band is doing anything or move on” segment of the waiting scale for fans. It actually may be the darkest part of said scale, where you wind up quickly moving through the five stages of grief about letting a group go, yet being thankful at the same time for all the music you do enjoy from them while clinging to the hope that if something new does pop up in the future it will serve as a pleasant surprise. It’s an odd yet freeing type of emotional whiplash, and one that many fans of France’s prog keyboard-heavy melodeath crew of Fractal Gates had likely started going through as the time passed since the release of the group’s 2013 album, Beyond The Self.

The musicians in Fractal Gates have certainly kept busy during that time, particularly vocalist Sebastien Pierre, who has become part of a variety of projects including Enshine, his solo work through Cold Insight, his various Mass Effect cover songs and reimaginings, and even some work with Monolithe — but those who enjoyed the up-tempo, keyboard-heavy work of Fractal Gates finally got their own taste of new material this year with the group’s new, densely packed album The Light That Shines, a disc that has absorbed five years worth of experiences into its own introspective formula. Continue reading »

ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jun 042018
 

 

(Andy Synn wrote this article, which includes thoughts about the new albums by Lago from Arizona and Burial In the Sky from Pennsylvania.)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but the concept of pure “originality”, in its most stringent and (ironically) restrictive form, is often given far too much weight and consideration when bands are being critiqued/assessed.

Now this in no way excuses bands whose music never rises above being a dilute derivative of something we’ve heard a thousand times before, but the truth is that the majority of musical growth and evolution occurs in the form of slow, incremental changes, with successive artists tweaking, altering, and adding to the formula(s) of their predecessors over time.

In that sense it’s a lot like science, where new developments are generally the results of years of perseverance, building on the legacy of the work done previously, so that the chain of events, the path of discovery, is clear for all to see.

Of course in music, as in science, there will always be sudden, paradigm-altering breakthroughs when inspiration suddenly strikes, and something truly “original” is created, but, for the most part, we need to acknowledge that all of us, from the least to the greatest, are standing on the shoulders of giants. Continue reading »

DEAD WRETCH: “HUG DIVISION DEAD WRETCH”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
May 312018
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Dead Wretch, released on April 27th by the Albuquerque label Ipos Music.)

Hug Division Dead Wretch may be the fastest I have ever gone from clicking around with the Random Band button on Metal-Archives to purchasing an album.

Hug Division Dead Wretch is the first full-length for Dead Wretch, a one-man project belonging to musician Daniel Jackson based out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, that at one point counted amongst its ranks fellow band member “Definitely Not A Copy Of EZDrummer”. It is a tongue-in-cheek black/death/grind project that despite its less-than-serious origins has grown into something that not only has an acidic sense of commentary but also the musical bite to back it up. Having spent a few years launching EPs and a handful of joking singles, Dead Wretch released its previously mentioned first full-length this year, comprising mostly new songs and three tracks re-done from the project’s first EP, the tersely titled fuck it.

While most projects like this tend to make use of the plug-and-play nature of grindcore, Dead Wretch performs a much more difficult act — that of skewering various specific subjects (at one point claiming to be from Minot, North Dakota, so they too could seem more exotic) but also offering righteous indignation and social commentary (check out “Eat Shit” for an immediate example) while backing it up with excellent music. Continue reading »

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