SHADES OF BLACK: LEVIATHAN, DEIPHAGO, HOTH, GRÁ, TOMUSZ

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
Apr 082018
 

 

I’m deep in the heart of Texas today for my fucking day-job, and will be deep in the heart of Philadelphia tomorrow for the same reason, but in the meantime I’ve managed to cobble together some streams of new music from the black realms, and some thoughts about each selection.

LEVIATHAN

It may be my imagination, but it seems that more and more bands who have a devout following are choosing to spring their new releases without much warning or PR assistance. That’s what Leviathan did one week ago, with the release of Unfailing Fall Into Naught through Ascension Monuments Media.

This new album is a compilation of tracks previously released in other formats. It includes Leviathan’s contributions to a 2004 split CD with Xasthur (released by Profound Lore Records) and a 2006 split with Sapthuran (released by Battle Kommand Records, and then later released by Southern Lord in 2007 as a stand-alone Leviathan EP called The Blind Wound). Continue reading »

INFERNO FESTIVAL 2018 – DAY 4

 Concert Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 062018
 

 

(Andy Synn was fortunate to be in attendance at the 2018 edition of Inferno Festival in Oslo on March 29 – April 1, and files this report, which we’re spreading out in installments this week. Day 4 is the focus of this post; reactions to Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 can be found here, here, and here.)

 

The fourth, and final, day of Inferno Festival 2018 was the day which held the fewest number of bands that I was really interested in, but that didn’t mean there weren’t a bunch of killer acts to see. Continue reading »

INFERNO FESTIVAL 2018 – DAY 3

 Concert Reviews  5 Responses »
Apr 052018
 

 

(Andy Synn was fortunate to be in attendance at the 2018 edition of Inferno Festival in Oslo on March 29 – April 1, and files this report, which we’re spreading out in installments this week. Day 3 is the focus of this post; reactions to Day 1 and Day 2 can be found here and here.)

 

The third day of the festival began with another long lie in, followed by a bit of a wander around Oslo, which included stopping at a nice little restaurant/bar just around the corner from the venue for a delicious burger and several pints of Norwegian beer, before I eventually made my way into Rockefeller in time to catch Nordjevel riffing it up on the main stage. Continue reading »

NECROS CHRISTOS: “DOMEDON DOXOMEDON”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Apr 052018
 

 

(Few bands have made as dominant a mark on the progression of extreme metal as Necros Christos, and that makes their new album an event worth focusing on — and Wil Cifer does that here, in this review.)

 

I am a sucker for niche sub-genres. “Occult Death Metal” was one of those. It meant… we masturbate on our copies of Onward to Golgotha, but we’re dark enough to lure people like you in. even with the influences worn plainly on their little black sleeves.

One of the best bands to emerge from that was this German band, who have heralded this album as their last. This supposed swan-song finds the band coming out from the murk of cavernous reverb to a more organic brand of death metal with less Incantation worship. For that matter, there are a few moments that sound like Morbid Angel. Continue reading »

ABYSSAL: “MMVIII – MMXIV”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 042018
 

 

(In this post Grant Skelton reviews a new anthology release collecting the music of the Mexican funeral doom band Abyssal, and shares news about Abyssal’s next album.)

 

“What are we? We live in the dark, everything we see it’s not what it appears to be. We are blind to this world, we are blind amongst ourselves, we live afraid. It is out feat that brings us to commit horrendous acts towards everything that surrounds us, fighting anger with anger, blood for blood. It’s our fear of finding out we are fragile and weak. Human figures on beautiful landscapes that is all we see, for we live in the abyssal plains… Music to be the companion on those long struggles for a better world, doesn’t matter the sound, when melody and meaning come together we feel we are not alone, there’s someone beside us fighting the same fights.”
(From the MMVIII – MMXIV liner notes)

 

 

Tijuana, Mexico is the home of Abyssal, a funeral doom band whose upcoming 2018 album (more info on that later) should be on our radar. Although active for a decade, word about Abyssal seems scarce even in dedicated doom circles. Their first 2 albums (Blindness and Landscapes) had only been available on CD-R prior to this year. Thanks to Concreto Records, fans may now enjoy a proper physical release of those two albums as part of an anthology called MMVIII – MMXIV. Rounding out the anthology is Abyssal’s 2014 track “Ad Noctum”. Continue reading »

INFERNO FESTIVAL 2018 – DAY 2

 Concert Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 042018
 

 

(Andy Synn was fortunate to be in attendance at the 2018 edition of Inferno Festival in Oslo on March 29 – April 1, and files this report, which will be spread out in installments over the balance of this week. Day 2 is the focus of this post; reactions to Day 1 can be found here.)

 

Day two of Inferno began with… me sleeping in. And damn, did it feel good.

It also meant that, after grabbing some food, doing some writing for NCS, and checking my work emails, I was nice and rested and ready to hit the festival good and early, even getting there with enough time to have a bit of a wander around the (admittedly quite limited) array of merch stalls on offer, where I picked up a copy of Drottnar’s second album Stratum and browsed a bunch of truly terrible band shirts, before grabbing a cool spot from which to watch the opening band, Swedish occult artists Mephorash. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FOSA — “DEMO MMXVI”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Apr 032018
 

 

This isn’t a premiere in the usual sense of the word, or the usual way in which we use it. The recording is a 2016 demo, first released digitally, and even the tape release that’s the occasion for this feature is a couple of months old. But I’m calling it a premiere anyway because the odds are that this is the first time most of you will be hearing the music. I can promise you that you won’t soon forget it.

Demo MMXVI is the first release by a Chilean band named Fosa, and it’s also the first release by a new Santiago-based label and distro named Unpleasant Records (a name that you’ll see again quite soon here, because we’re also hosting a stream of the label’s second release.)

There’s no satisfying short-hand genre phrase for Fosa’s music on this demo. Crust and black metal are probably the dominant ingredients, but there are others, including sludge, harsh noise, and regular doses of lysergic acid. The end result is an experience that’s incredibly intense and undeniably traumatic. The sounds are primally powerful, titanically heavy, and murderous in their attempts to fracture the listener’s sanity. Continue reading »

INFERNO FESTIVAL 2018 – DAY 1

 Concert Reviews  4 Responses »
Apr 032018
 

 

(Andy Synn was fortunate to be in attendance at the 2018 edition of Inferno Festival in Oslo on March 29 – April 1, and files this report, which will be spread out in installments over the balance of this week.)

 

What to say about Inferno Festival that I haven’t said before?

From the venue(s) and the location, to the bands and the general organisation, it’s still one of my favourite festivals I’ve ever been to, and this year was a particularly good one for me.

Of course things didn’t get off to the best start, as my plane was delayed on the tarmac for almost two hours, meaning that, by the time I finally hopped off the plane, jumped on a train, and made my way into Oslo, I had missed the one part of the Inferno Music Conference, which I really wanted to attend.

Anyway… Continue reading »

KRODA: “SELBSTWELT”

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Apr 022018
 

 

It seems that more and more bands (though still a small number) have been springing their albums by surprise, with little advance notice and no preview tracks, and the Ukrainian powerhouse Kroda did that at midnight last night, launching a new album named Selbstwelt on Bandcamp (though I confess that I was given an opportunity to hear the album in advance of that release).

Selbstwelt (The Land of Selbst) is Kroda’s seventh full-length studio album and joins a discography that also includes EPs, live recordings, and compilations. It follows a live album, Kälte Aurora – Live In Lemberg II, and is the band’s first studio release since 2015’s Навій схрон (Navij Skhron) (reviewed here), which was a significant departure from most previous Kroda releases, consisting of six ghostly and chilling ambient-music tracks and three black metal songs (including an electrifying cover of a song by Kroda’s countrymen Nokturnal Mortum), each different from the others and all still different in some ways from the pulse of Kroda’s past music.

Selbstwelt can be understood as both a return to earlier times and as a culmnation up of the band’s career so far. In Kroda’s own words: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INISANS — “TRANSITION”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 022018
 

 

When many of us think about Swedish metal of death, what often comes to mind first is rotten, old-skull, chain-sawing morbidity, a mix of lurching ghoulishness and juggernaut plundering. Inisans are from Sweden, and they play death metal, but their music is a kind of incinerating lunacy, a form of shocking and electrifying violence that tends to leave listeners bludgeoned black and blue and gasping for air.

Those tendencies are rampantly on display in their debut album Transition, which will be released by Blood Harvest Records on April 6. But you won’t have to wait until the 6th to find out just how explosive the album is, because we have a full stream for you today. Continue reading »

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