BENEATH: “EPHEMERIS”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 112017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli prepared this review of the new album by Iceland’s Beneath, released in August by Unique Leader Records.)

I was a 100% emphatic fan of Beneath’s sophomore release The Barren Throne. it was one of 2014‘s finest examples of technical/progressive death metal done with immaculate nuance and care. I wasn’t a big fan of the band’s first album, Enslaved By Fear, but it was different from The Barren Throne. Based on the band’s new album Ephemeris, I can now see that what I attributed to just natural evolution or getting better as a band wasn’t that. It’s actually that Beneath wants to write a different kind of death metal album every go around.

Ephemeris abandons The Barren Throne and it’s Suffocation-esque mix of bleak melody and noodily passages of inter-dimensional angular tangents, opting for something of a more opaque sci-fi aesthetic. Continue reading »

DAWN RAY’D: “THE UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 112017
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by the UK’s Dawn Ray’d, which will be released on October 2nd.)

Despite what some people might have you believe, Black Metal is not, nor has it ever really been, a monolith.

In fact if you look back at the early days of the scene, and in particular those responsible for laying its foundations, you’ll quickly become aware of the variety of personalities, approaches, and opinions which, collectively, contributed to the genesis of the nascent genre, while also planting the seeds for the variety of different styles and sub-genres to come.

Of course while the guiding principle of Black Metal may well be “do what thou will”, this doesn’t mean you can claim that anything is Black Metal. There are certain markers you still need to hit, certain rules you might say, that apply even here.

But within these (relatively loose) confines you’ll find a world of different approaches, different beliefs, different ideologies – from nihilism to humanism, asceticism to Satanism – all clashing and coalescing in a tumultuous display of pure passion and unflinching intensity.

Which is why, regardless of what you might think about their personalities or their politics, I have little hesitation in declaring The Unlawful Assembly to be one of the best Black Metal albums of the year. Continue reading »

THE LURKING FEAR: “OUT OF THE VOICELESS GRAVE”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Sep 082017
 

 

(TheMadIsraeli prepared this review of the debut album by Sweden’s The Lurking Fear, released on August 11 by Century Media.)

Let’s revisit what Swedish death metal royalty group The Lurking Fear had to say when they announced their formation:

“We want our Death Metal ugly, twisted and possessed. We miss the urgency, intensity and ‘realness’ in a lot of the modern Death Metal, therefore it is natural for us to stray away from the streamlined sounds of today, but rather focus on bringing sheer, natural weirdness and horror back to the table…””

This band has a ton of prestige-level pedigree behind it. Besides being fronted by Tomas Lindberg, the king of the mid-range vomitus bark, the members have history in bands such as The Crown, Edge Of Sanity, Marduk, Cradle Of Filth, God Macabre — the list is fucking long. I also appreciate very much TLF’s mission statement because I agree that death metal nowadays is very much lacking the urgency, intensity, and realness it speaks of. I’ve reviewed, and others here have reviewed, plenty of exceptions to this rule of course — our site thrives on the deathly arts — but trust me that what we give praise to here is a baffling minority. Continue reading »

SEPTICFLESH: “CODEX OMEGA”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 082017
 

 

(DGR wrote this extended review of the new album by the Greek band SepticFlesh, which was released on September 1 in North America by Prosthetic Records.)

It’s hard to believe that three years have already passed since yours truly was given the opportunity to review Greece’s symphonic death metal arbiters SepticFlesh and their album Titan. Since then, I’ve dedicated a fair share of words to the band, as their brand of orchestra mixed in with crushingly heavy death metal scratches just the right itch, but I always wind up musing about the same subject, which is how the band’s chosen genres combine in order to form the band as it is today.

It’s interesting to me because, pulled apart, the orchestral music genre and metal genre are two gigantic beasts in their own right, so the thought of combining them makes sense. It’s been done for years, of course, but the gentlemen in SepticFlesh have developed a unique mastery of it. Even in the hands of masters it can occasionally get a little unwieldy — because although the two combine well, in the world of SepticFlesh they are also treading a very thin line, and depending on what side of that line they land on is the version of SepticFlesh you’ll be getting at that point in time. Continue reading »

RASTER DENSITY: “MOTHER OV MANKIND”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 072017
 

 

(Here is Andy Synn’s review of the new album by the Finnish band Raster Density, which was released in May of this year.)

It’s been something of a banner year for the Technical side of the Death Metal spectrum so far, with new releases from both established luminaries (Decrepit Birth, Origin, Inanimate Existence) and up-and-coming acts (Replacire, Enfold Darkness) grabbing hype and headlines for their furious fretsmanship and shameless dedication to crushing complexity.

And while this torrent of technical tumult doesn’t show any signs of abating any time soon – with new albums from Archspire (which I should be reviewing next week), Fleshkiller (aka Extol 2.0), and The Faceless (which, yes, I have heard) all on the horizon – the sheer array of impressively OTT offerings clamouring for our attention means it’s inevitable that some bands will slip through the cracks.

Which, until now at least, had very much been the case with Finland’s Raster Density. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEVIL’S EMISSARY — “DEMIURGE ASCETICISM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Sep 062017
 

 

Offered in praise of the Harvester of Worlds, the great Swallower of Suns, the new EP by the Polish band Devil’s Emissary is a stunning amalgam of black and death metal that shocks and seduces in equal measures. It’s due for release on September 9 by Third Eye Temple, but we present a full stream of the EP today. Its name is Demiurge Asceticism.

This new three-song work follows the groups’s second album by two years, and reflects an evolution in sound, one in which staggering doses of heaviness have been blended with spine-shivering eruptions of black fury. The result is a changing pageant of armageddon-like chaos, pestilential doom, and blood-freezing grandeur, a tale of destruction and resurgence. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET — UNBEHELD — “DUST”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 062017
 

 

(DGR reviews the new EP by Unbeheld from British Columbia, which was released near the end of July.)

Something happened in the three years since their self-titled EP in 2014 that caused Canadian death metal band Unbeheld to develop a nihilistic streak that has spilled over into their music. The group’s latest EP, Dust, features seven songs and not a friendly thought amongst them. The band themselves even explain this upfront on the Bandcamp page for Dust, stating:

Dust is lyrically based on thoughts rooted in depression and anxiety. The sort of feelings that one dealing with such mental conditions goes through on a daily basis. The sense that nothing ever quite feels “right”. The fact that that exists in itself is an absurd phenomena. It also deals with the usual death metal themes of death and violence; but instead of being about the process of these things, it more so deals with the thoughts that go through ones mind during death and or while performing acts of violence as well as a general fear of fading away into nothingness. That is to say that after we die; nothing we did really mattered.

I’m not a gambling man but I’d guess that “friendly” and “approachable” will likely not be the words attached to Unbeheld’s music, and to be fair, the artwork for Dust matches the music within — intense and violent. Continue reading »

PSYGNOSIS: “NEPTUNE”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 052017
 

 

(DGR prepared this extended review of the latest album by the French band Psygnosis, which was released in May.)

I tend to approach French now-instrumental band Psygnosis with something of an art-house cafe motif in mind. Over the years, the group have slowly morphed into a project that has combined quiet, minimalistic tendencies — mostly credited to small electronics usage — with fierce blasts of heavy metal, and a love of inserting movie samples into their songs so that they become something of a story that you’re only getting a partial glimpse of.

The overall picture is usually spread throughout the whole disc, but even then it often feels like something you’ve entered into in medias res so that it isn’t just the music you’re enjoying, you’re also getting the soundtrack to a series of events that you’re not witnessing. There’s no picture except the one that Psygnosis chooses to paint, and so the music takes on a dreamlike quality, in between the heavier segments — which, as they’ve gone later in their career, have become a little bit less of the focus and more the backing foundation.

Psygnosis really nailed this formula with their release Human Be[ing] in 2014, and afterward would make a drastic change in sound, which saw their vocalist bowing out in favor of becoming an entirely instrumental group, and a cellist stepping in to take the lead spot – with the extra strings now serving to take over the vocal lines. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ENTOMBMENT / IRON FLESH / SEPREVATION

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Sep 042017
 

 

(In this post Andy Synn combines reviews of three recent EPs, with music streams of course.)

Phew, time really flies doesn’t it? I mean, somehow it’s already September and although we still have a huge number of releases to look forward to before the year’s end, I find my mind already turning towards the upcoming Listmania with an equal mix of anticipation and trepidation.

Thankfully that particular furore is still a little way off and, although work is keeping me pretty darn busy at the moment, I should be able to fit in quite a lot of reviews and features before the time comes for our annual wrap-up.

So, without further ado, get ready to wrap your earholes around three short, but succulent morsels of Thrash, Death, and Death-Thrash courtesy of Entombment (USA), Iron Flesh (FR), and Seprevation (UK). Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 25): VENENUM, SOIJL, IN REVERENCE, ATREXIAL

 Album Reviews  6 Responses »
Sep 042017
 

 

(Our ally Gorger from Norway reaches the quarter-century mark in his series, continuing to shed light on underground gems that our all-seeing eyes have somehow failed to spot. To find more of his discoveries, type “Gorger” in our search bar or visit Gorger’s Metal.)

Oh, my… has more than two months passed since my last post already? Holy fuck. I keep promising myself to make at least one of these appearances each month, but it’s as if people around me can smell it when I’ve got time to spare. Maybe it’s time for that semi-annual bath. To paraphrase Mr. J. Lennon: “Life is what happens when you sit your tired ass down”.

Oh, well. Here’s another four chunks of metallic meat that you shouldn’t miss out on. And since there was no protest last time around, I’ll attempt at shortening down on the initial overloaded writing, whilst leaving a shrouded clue of a link for the utterly nerdy connoisseurs. Continue reading »

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