ORDER OV RIVEN CATHEDRALS: “GÖBEKLI TEPE”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
May 012018
 

 

(DGR wrote this review of the new album by the Italian death metal band Order Ov Riven Cathedrals.)

Göbekli Tepe, the recently released full-length follow-up to last year’s Order Ov Riven Cathedrals EP The Discontinuinity’s Interlude, takes absolutely no prisoners from the moment its first real song kicks off. Following a similar format to last year’s EP, Göbekli Tepe basically has an intro for ambience and then spends the rest of its time with you going as fast as feasibly possible — in line with many of their Italian hyperfast blast-heavy death metal kin — and making almost no compromise in favor of breathing room.

The mysterious two-piece behind Order Ov Riven Cathedrals continue their science fiction and mythological bent nearly a year later, this time amplifying just about every aspect of last year’s EP, making it feel like The Discontinuity’s Interlude really was laying out a blueprint for them to follow. Order Ov Riven Cathedrals not only wring just about every ounce of highly accelerated  death metal they can out of their time, but also bring along a bevy of familiar movie and media samples (how many albums out there have a sample from Breaking Bad on them these days?). These include metal’s recent obsession with Oppenheimer’s television interview wherein he utters “I am become death, destroyer of worlds”… although the Riven Cathedrals crew mix it up a bit by using it in reverse and closing out with, “A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent”. Continue reading »

DEMONICAL: “CHAOS MANIFESTO”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 302018
 

 

(We present DGR’s review of the latest album by Demonical, which is out now via Agonia Records.)

Considering the various skulls, demon bones, and other awesome metal ephemera in the album art gracing the front of Demonical’s Chaos Manifesto it is probably a strange situation to open with the idea that, with this album, the comfort-food nature of the Swede-death genre and its effects on your reviewer have been firmly established. There’s something near instantly recognizable in the genre’s chosen pacings and structures that feels immediately familiar and speaks to the lizard segment of one’s brain, so much so that just about any band who embrace the mid-to-high tempo thudding nature of the music are bound to at least put on a decent live show, and, with a genre whose foundations and blueprints are so solidly in place at this point, those who merely follow it with a checklist can at least kick out a decent disc.

Which just makes it all the more difficult for a group to stand out from the pack or, given their aims, to make an album that at least ranks as a “solid good time”. Demonical, a group born from the hiatus of another Swedish purveyor of mid-tempo thudding death metal (Centinex) and now with a lineup that includes a pretty healthy chunk of the newly reactivated version of the aforementioned group — three of whose members were made official in 2017 — have released what could be considered the most straight-shooting Swede-death album of 2018 so far. In Chaos Manifesto there are no pretenses, no real attempts at breaking genre conventions, just a solid eight-track, thirty-six-minute slab of death metal that gives metal fans across the variety of the circle-headbanging genres something to salivate over. Continue reading »

JUST BEFORE DAWN: “TIDES OF BLOOD”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 272018
 

 

It is time once again to cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war, and simultaneously to ring the dinner bell in the heads of those Pavlovian dogs among us who salivate at the sound of chainsawing riffs and the movement of skull-plundering rhythms. Bolt Thrower may have fought their last battle, Hail of Bullets may have been drained of life, Asphyx may be pondering their next move, but Just Before Dawn continue to rise in gruesome power and terrible glory.

On their new album, Tides of Glory, all the key ingredients from previous releases remain in place — the thematic focus on events from the Second World War; the head-hooking, body-moving riffs; the monstrous power of the enlisted vocalists; the obliterating might of a rhythm section firing on all cylinders. But while riff-meister Anders Biazzi and his combat-veteran comrades haven’t made any dramatic departures from the old-school death metal stylings of the earlier albums (and it would be a rude shock if they had), they’ve still found ways to up their game. Continue reading »

DIMMU BORGIR: “EONIAN”

 Album Reviews  10 Responses »
Apr 272018
 

 

(This is Andy Synn’s review of the new album by Dimmu Borgir, which will be released in May by Nuclear Blast.)

Some of you may be surprised to see this album being written about here at NCS. After all, Dimmu Borgir are (still) a pretty big deal, and our general ethos has always been to focus on smaller, less well-exposed bands, wherever possible.

But considering that my personal modus operandi has always been simply to write about whatever interests me, you’re going to get to read/hear my unfiltered thoughts and unsolicited opinions whether you like it or not.

Although, of course, you could always just not click “Continue reading”… but then, where’s the fun in that? Continue reading »

FOEHAMMER: “SECOND SIGHT”

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Apr 272018
 

 

(Our friend Grant Skelton returns to NCS with this vivid review of the debut full-length by Virginia’s Foehammer, released on April 6 by Australopithecus Records. It is the second review of the album we’ve published.)

Foehammer’s self-titled EP, which was released in the spring of 2015, was one of the first ventures I made on my descent into doom metal. Up to that point I’d dabbled, almost exclusively, in extreme bands experimenting with increasing the speed at which they played. After nearly 20 years of such apoplectic throttling, something in my psyche (soul?) began to yearn for auditory victuals from the other end of the speed spectrum.

And I dove head-first into the boggy, bottom-heavy bombardment of “Stormcrow.” This track thumped my brain like a warclub. I couldn’t listen to it enough. So naturally I chomped at the bit to review the EP. It teased proficiency; giving us only a flash of what Foehammer could really do.

I’m glad to say that, three years later, Foehammer’s dormancy has ended! A full-length offering has arrived. It is a cavernous, blunt-skulled, Neanderthal brute entitled Second Sight. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH 2018 (PART 2): DE PROFUNDIS / KING GOAT / SVALBARD

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 252018
 

 

(Andy Synn continues his occasional series in which he devotes attention to new releases by UK bands, here presenting a trio of reviews and music streams.)

Despite the fact that these days I exist more on the periphery of what one might loosely describe as “the scene” here in the UK, I’m still very much on a mission to talk/write about some of its best and brightest stars, and hopefully expose them to a whole new audience in the process.

And while each of the following bands has been featured here at NCS before (some more than others), this isn’t so much a case of favouritism as it is an acknowledgement that all three continue to make extremely compelling, attention-grabbing music, and their latest albums are no exception. Continue reading »

AGE OF ARCADIA — “ELEYSIS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Apr 242018
 

 

(This is TheMadIsraeli’s review of the debut album by the Berlin-based band Age of Arcadia.)

All of my reviews this year are probably going to come some time after an album’s release.  I’m really looking to emphasize what sticks with me long-term, that just won’t let me go no matter what.  Today I want to talk about a band who’s gone very much under the radar, shamefully so, whose debut is quite possibly one of the best thrash albums ever conceived in the 2010‘s.

Age Of Arcadia are from Germany, but their music at least on this album has a very pronounced Hellenistic thematic approach, based on the song titles, lyrical content, and album art, while musically capturing the mythic titanic might of Greek mythology.  Their debut Eleysis (Έλευσις) is one of the best albums I’ve encountered this year so far, although it’s technically a re-release according to the band despite the fact I can find no record of any previous releases. Continue reading »

PLUTONIAN SHORE: “ALPHA ET OMEGA”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Apr 232018
 

 

(Lonegoat, the man behind the necroclassical music of Goatcraft, provides this guest review of the new release by Plutonian Shore from San Antonio, Texas.)

 

In Alpha et Omega, Plutonian Shore invokes the axiological Logos of black metal and confronts the gentrification and stagnation brought about by indie rockers and scenesters. Their circumspection is fine-tuned and pierces through the music scene’s ruses of an abundance. Never deserted is the energetic imaginativeness which overwhelms the nondescript bottom line of reality via mind and solar plexus, woven in fierce, inexorable abstraction. Weakness is cast aside. The soul is forever athirst for unbridled power. Dalits need not apply; this is music from the dream-mind of a slumbering Brahmin. Continue reading »

ELFSGEDROCH: “DWALEND BIJ NACHT EN ONTIJ”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Apr 232018
 

 

In 2016 the mysterious Dutch black metal band Elfsgedroch made a very impressive debut with Op de beenderen van onze voorvaderen, and now they have made a truly triumphant return through a new release named Dwalend bij Nacht en Ontij, which has been branded an EP but is 44 minutes long.

The “EP” was inspired by particular places and events, by aspects of the culture and folklore of the northwest coast of the Netherlands. But the music summons emotional experiences that are unlimited by place or time, but are instead fundamental to human existence, and it does so with enthralling power. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LLNN — “DEADS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 202018
 

 

Deads, the new album by the Danish band LLNN, is a sonic super-weapon, one that operates on multiple levels, inflicting both psychic and physical trauma on a shattering scale. It fires the imagination on multiple levels as well, bringing to mind terrifying vistas of apocalyptic obliteration as well as unnerving diaphonous visions that gleam with astral light. Not surprisingly, given the vast scale of the music and its relentless intensity, the band have explained: “The overall album theme of Deads is about births and downfalls of civilizations in other worlds throughout the universe, from creation to final decay, the depletion of the host….”

Pelagic Records will release the album on April 27th, but we have a full stream of it for you today, preceded by some further thoughts about what LLNN have accomplished on this staggeringly powerful record. Continue reading »

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