SHORT BUT SWEET: MANGLER, GULCH, BEAST JESUS

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Jul 222018
 

 

It’s Sunday, and yes we will have a SHADES OF BLACK post a bit later today (a two-parter), but first I thought I’d shoehorn in a trio of way-under-the-radar EPs that I’ve been enjoying recently, in an attempt to boost their radar profile.

MANGLER

The opening moments of “Carrion Mother” sound sort of like the equivalent of someone revving a big Harley right before it surges from a stop. It builds anticipation, and then pays off viciously. The song becomes a malicious thrashing romp with bursts of nasty braying melody and a very nasty acid snarler behind the mic, too. It gets your own internal pistons going hard as it thunders down the highway, throwing off sparks and trailing flames. Continue reading »

QUICK HITS: SENZAR AND ONTOGENY

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jul 202018
 

 

I really wanted to end this week with a big fat juicy round-up, overstuffed with new songs and videos that I’ve latched onto over the past week but couldn’t cram into other round-ups over the last two days. Alas, I’ve run out of time. But rather than just scuttle morosely out of sight, head down and small tears dribbling down my cheeks, I thought I’d at least give you a couple of quick hits.

SENZAR

Today the Irish band Senzar, which rose from the ashes of Coldwar and embraced a name reportedly based upon the works of different philosophers, including Ernst Cassirer and Russian occultist Helena Blavatsky, released their first EP, which has their name on it but has no title, through Hostile Media.

After seeing a press release I had made a note a few days ago to check out a new video the band had released, but it wasn’t until receiving encouragement from starkweather’s Rennie today that I did so, and then moved from there to the EP as a whole. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DRAGHKAR — “THE ENDLESS HOWLING ABYSS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jul 202018
 

 

After releasing a 2017 demo and a pair of 2018 splits on the Blood Harvest label (with Desekryptor and Ossuarium), the Los Angeles-based death metal trio Draghkar are now just one week away from the release of a new EP, appropriately named The Endless Howling Abyss. It’s a four-track effort that will be available digitally, with a CD release by Craneo Negro Records and a cassette tape release by Nameless Grave Records, but we’re giving you a chance to stream the EP today.

While Draghkar’s first release spawned references to old school, cavernous death metal in a kindred spirit to such modern practitioners as Grave Miasma and Tomb Mold, the new EP is a more violent and hard-charging affair that draws influence from early Greek black and death metal, as well as the likes of such other old-school progenitors as Molested and Mercyful Fate. The music on this outing displays a kind of wild, ecstatic savagery, with a feverishness that matches its cruelty. Continue reading »

AUSTIN TERROR FEST 2018: A PHOTO RECORD (DAY 2)

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 202018
 

 

The second annual installment of Austin Terror Fest took place in the heart of Texas on June 15-17, 2018, proudly co-sponsored by NCS. It featured performances by 30 bands from around the U.S. (and outside it). It was a great event, and we’re already anxious for ATF 2019 (and yes, work is already under way to present the third edition of the festival next year). We were very fortunate that New Orleans-based photographer Teddie Taylor was there to document the fest through her lenses, and to share her photos with us so that we, in turn, can share them with you.

On Wednesday we presented photos from the first day of the festival, and today the focus is on the performances that took place on the second day, with sets by a dozen bands alternating between indoor and outdoor stages at Barracuda in Austin. And without further ado, here’s our selection from the many great images that Teddie captured during these performances: Continue reading »

DRAWN AND QUARTERED: “THE ONE WHO LURKS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 192018
 

 

(This is as much a testimonial from the heart as it is a review, and it comes from our friend Vonlughlio, recently transplanted from the Dominican Republic to the U.S.)

This time around I’ve been given the opportunity to do a review for Drawn and Quartered’s new opus The One Who Lurks, and forever will be grateful for this opportunity, for this is a band that has been releasing amazing albums for over 20 years and that in my humble opinion should be more recognized for their musical contributions.

I recall the first time I found out about this band as a teenager back in the Dominican Republic, alongside many other greats (Incantation, Immolation, Death, Deicide, and many more). The impact it had is still present and clear today in my late 30’s. So why do I mention this, you might ask? Let alone name the other classic bands? Because, for me, those bands and this one are at the same level, and Drawn and Quartered have been consistently releasing music that has only gotten better in time, while maintaining their signature sound. Continue reading »

AUSTIN TERROR FEST 2018: A PHOTO RECORD (DAY 1)

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 182018
 

 

On Monday of this week we completed a three-part post providing photographic memories of Northwest Terror Fest 2018, thanks to the artistic eye and skilled technique of New Orleans-based photographer Teddie Taylor. Today we begin another three-part photo retrospective featuring Teddie’s photos, and this time the focus is on another NCS co-sponsored festival that took place earlier this year — Austin Terror Fest — whose organizers and staff also played integral roles in helping us successfully put on the second edition of NWTF in Seattle.

The second annual installment of ATF took place in the heart of Texas on June 15-17 and featured performances by 30 bands from around the U.S. (and outside it). A small number of those overlapped the line-up of NWTF, but most did not. By all accounts, it was a great event, and the energy comes through in Teddie’s photos. Work has already begun on the 2019 edition of this Texas-based festival.

Teddie’s westward trip from New Orleans took longer than expected, and so the following montage of her pics from ATF’s first day includes only the final four bands who played on June 15th, at the Lost Well venue. We’ll have complete photo spreads of the second and third days in the following days here at NCS. Continue reading »

SKELETONWITCH: “DEVOURING RADIANT LIGHT”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Jul 182018
 

 

(Here’s Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Skeletonwitch, which will arrive on Friday of this week via Prosthetic Records.)

By this point, with the album’s release but a few scant days away, you’ll likely have seen and read a number of different reviews and opinion pieces about the new Skeletonwitch, some of it positive, some of it negative, some of it… a little hard to follow.

But if all that confusing, back and forth coverage has got you turned upside down, to the point where you just don’t know what to think, then fear not! I’ve got you covered with what promises to be the definitive take on the album. Continue reading »

LIGHT THIS CITY: “TERMINAL BLOOM”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 172018
 

 

(This is DGR’s review of the comeback album by the Bay Area’s Light This City, which is out now via Creator-Destructor Records.)

We’ve been having a lot of fun with it lately but there seems to be a legitimate concerted effort to resurrect the mid-aughts musically, with a handful of groups that gained prominence during the early metalcore and deathcore explosions coming back after multi-year hiatuses and breakups, deciding that 2018 was going to be the time they all returned. They’re obviously not the only bands to do so this year, but it sure does seem like 2018 has been designated the year of the comeback.

We have to be on something of a ten-year cycle for groups breaking up and re-uniting, because that is one of the few ways I can explain how so many bands who were content to hang it up about seven-to-ten years ago all came back at once. If you’ll allow us to pull the curtains back a bit, it seems like my recent review work slate consists entirely of groups returning from my first few years of community college – – particularly the three-pack of Bleeding Through, The Agony Scene, and Light This City, although Into Eternity coming back and local Sacramento groups Journal and Jack Ketch both also joining the fray are part of the phenomenon, with the last two admittedly a likely the reason I’m pounding away at this theme.

As mentioned, Light This City are one of these groups, calling it quits after the release of their 2008 album Stormchaser and from then on reuniting sporadically only for a small handful of live dates (coincidentally the only times I had seen them up until July 1st of this year) — until this year, which saw the late-May release of the group’s newest album through Creator-Destructor Records, Terminal Bloom. Continue reading »

NORTHWEST TERROR FEST 2018: A PHOTO RECORD (DAY 3)

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 162018
 

 

For the second year in a row, NCS was proud to co-present Northwest Terror Fest, which took place this year on May 31 – June 2 in Seattle, Washington. Several of us in the NCS family helped organize and present the fest, and I guess that makes us a bit biased, but we’re not the only ones who thought it was a fantastic event. The feedback from bands, fans, and the venues has been uniformly very, very positive — so much so that we and our co-conspirators are already at work planning the third installment of NWTF for 2019.

We will of course be bringing you news about next year’s fest when the time is right, but now we want to take one more look back at NWTF 2018. And to do that, we’ve been fortunate to present some of the amazing photos that New Orleans-based photographer Teddie Taylor took while the festival was in progress. You can see her pics from Day 1 here and Day 2 here, and what follows are shots of the performances on the festival’s final day.

P.S. As of today, full pro-shot videos of almost all the performances at NWTF 2018 are now live, thanks to our ally Max Volume Silence Live, and you can find all of them HERE. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MORROW — “THE WEIGHT OF THESE FEATHERS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Jul 162018
 

 

The Seattle band Morrow devoted four years of work to their debut album, The Weight of These Feathers, and it sounds like they devoted every waking hour of those four years to this remarkably impressive creation. It’s nothing if not ambitious, revealing a rich array of sounds, movements, and moods across these seven, mostly longer-than-average tracks, which collectively span almost an hour of music, and interweaving a diverse range of styles that includes (but isn’t limited to) black metal, progressive metal, ambient music, and folk.

Morrow will release the album on July 21st, and it’s our pleasure to bring you a full stream of the record today, preceded by a few more thoughts about it by way of introduction. (Okay, more than a few.) Continue reading »

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