VERWOED – THE MOTHER

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 272024
 

(Andy Synn reminds you all that it’s mother’s day this Friday)

As has been pretty well documented, I’m somewhat of a sceptic/cynic when it comes to “one man bands”.

The reason for this is that – in my estimation, at least – the lack of that collaborative creative push-and-pull which you get in a full band situation all too often results in a rather myopic view of things from the singular solo-artist, who may well have something they want to say (I’m not denying that) but doesn’t realise that it’s already been said, in much the same way, many times before.

There are, however, obvious exceptions to this “rule”… certain artists who don’t just possess the necessary vision, and the voice with which to express it, but are also self-aware enough to know that a big part of getting your message across is not only what you say, but how you say it.

And one of those artists is Erik Bleijenberg, aka Verwoed.

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AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABOVE AURORA — “MYRIAD WOES”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 262024
 

Four years ago we premiered and reviewed at length The Shrine of Deterioration, the second album by the Polish “black/doom” band Above Aurora. It followed the dark and desolate path whose first steps were marked by the band’s 2016 debut album Onward Desolation and their 2018 EP Path To Ruin.

That second album created an almost relentlessly shattering and yet also wholly enthralling experience. No surprise, we leaped at the chance to premiere the band’s forthcoming third album, Myriad Woes, which we do today in advance of its March 29 release by War Anthem Records.

It’s obvious from the album’s title alone that Above Aurora‘s worldview has not brightened over the last four years, and the music is as dark and devastating as you might expect from their previous works, but they have managed to increase the scale and colossal power of the traumas they transmit, as well as providing dramatic contrasts in tone, volume, and speed, variations in style, and melodic nuances that are piercing in the midst of cataclysms. Continue reading »

THE ABSENCE: “THE ABSENCE”

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Mar 262024
 


artwork by Dan Goldsworthy

(On March 28th The Absence will release a new self-titled album via Listenable Insanity Records, and we’ve got DGR‘s extensive review of it below.)

You could argue that it’s a common enough situation that it shouldn’t warrant a raised eyebrow, but six albums in is usually not the expected timeframe for one to get the honor of being the self-titled one.

Maybe it’s just us, but there’s a lot to be said for being the ‘self-titled’ album. It usually marks a few things within a group’s history; it’s either the one with the definitive sound for the band, or the complete reinvention. Sometimes the event of the ‘self-titled’ is usually two or three albums in, when it seems a group has finally honed its craft. The self-titled album is stating to the world that this release is such and such band.

You usually don’t get the self-titled album this late unless the band have opted for the second of our two above-mentioned scenarios, wherein the group are completely reinventing themselves and taking a serious gamble. It’s a way to dodge the curse of naming your release after a phoenix or some new-born flame because that almost wills your group into breaking up soon after. Yet with The Absence‘s The Absence we’re not really facing any of those scenarios. Continue reading »

LEAVING – LIMINAL

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Mar 252024
 

(Andy Synn eases us into another week with his take on the debut album from Leaving, out now)

Webster’s Dictionary defines “liminal” as “of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition: in-between, transitional”.

Which is a pretty apt metaphor for Californian collective Leaving, whose sound exists somewhere in the strange, unresolved space between Doom and Shoegaze.

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SHADES OF BLACK: SCARCITY, SIDUS ATRUM, STRYCHNOS, SVDESTADA, SVRM

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 242024
 


Scarcity — photo by Caroline Harrison

Today’s selection of black and blackened metal was partly the result of coincidence and partly by design. Coincidentally, out of all the worthy songs I listened to in searching for selections, many of them were by bands whose names begin with “S”. By design, I limited this column to those bands. Chalk it up to some need for order out of chaos.

Also coincidentally, two of these songs were accompanied by videos that are among the best I’ve seen this year in any genre, and by arranging this column alphabetically by band name, they come first. Continue reading »

HAMFERÐ: “MEN GUÐS HOND ER STERK”

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Mar 222024
 

(Didrik Mešiček wrote the following review of a new album by the Faroese band Hamferð, which is being released today by Metal Blade Records.)

The Faroe Islands, a harsh archipelago, technically belonging to Denmark, with a population of roughly 54k people has 14 bands listed on Metal Archives. Ten of those are active and one of those is Hamferð, which is the band whose new release, Men Guðs hond er sterk, I’ll be covering in this article. The band has been around since 2008 and won the Wacken Metal Battle competition in 2012, after which they’ve released two full-length albums, with this being their third, which will come out on March 22nd on Metal Blade Records.

I can’t say I’ve been overly familiar with this band before and mostly only knew them by name, but what really drew me to this record immediately was the title. Men Guðs hond er sterk or, in English, “but God’s hand is strong”, is for some reason one of those phrases that automatically make me very intrigued, as it’s filled with promise and romance.

If we take into account the harshness of the Faroes, the phrase is so much more impactful, as life on the islands can truly be rough and, from what I’ve seen and been told, it truly feels as if you’re at the mercy of some sort of a god and its whims, whether on land or in a fishing boat not far off shore, a lesson captured in the tragic 1915 whaling event that inspired the record. Continue reading »

SHOW REVIEW: MUNICIPAL WASTE, GHOUL, NECROT, AND DEAD HEAT IN L.A., MAR. 5, 2024

 Concert Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 212024
 

(Our friend Ben Manzella caught the March 5 Los Angeles stop of the recently concluded Brainsqueeze Tour 2024, featuring performances by Municipal Waste, Ghoul, Necrot, and Dead Heat, and brought us the following report and his own photos of the event.)

While I can’t claim I’ve been to every venue in Los Angeles, it is still rare I get to attend a show at a venue that has recently opened for business. After the ticket demand proved beyond the capacity of the original venue, The Tankcrimes Records Brainsqueeze tour headlined by Municipal Waste managed to find a more fitting space in the Bellwether.

Along with being the Brainsqueeze tour, this tour is also a celebration of 20 years since the release of Municipal Waste’s record Waste Em’ All. Along with Municipal Waste on the tour are Ghoul, Necrot, and Dead Heat. While every band is heavy in their own right, each band is as similar as they are different; whether that was considered or not, this lineup sold out the Bellwether, which is just over double the capacity of the originally scheduled venue on a Tuesday night. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THE BLEAK PICTURE — “MEANINGLESS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 212024
 

The image on the cover of the debut album from the Finnish duo The Bleak Picture is striking. It shows a group of people paused in their normal daily movements (except, perhaps, for the police) and staring at a dark hunched figure, or maybe two of them, on the precipice of some catastrophe, lost in either horror or mourning or both. The origins of the devastation are hard to decipher, but the ruination is apparent.

Gazing at the image, it does seem to connect with the title of the album — Meaningless — but the exact nature of the connection, even though it feels right, is as mysterious as the exact nature of the catastrophe in the cover image.

Well, it would have been an interesting question to ask composer/instrumentalist Jussi Hänninen and lyricist/vocalist Tero Ruohonen what that image depicts and why they chose it, but alas, the thought came too late. But maybe it’s for the best, because there are mysteries in the music too — and catastrophes and mourning and something like a search for meaning. Continue reading »

ACATHEXIS – IMMERSE

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Mar 212024
 

(Today Andy Synn submerges himself in the new album from Acathexis, out now)

In the intro to my review yesterday two days ago (sorry, it was meant to run on Wednesday, but we ended up not having space for it) I wrote about how, at its heart, music is all about communicating something – an idea, an emotion, a sensation – that cannot be expressed any other way.

And, yet, the artist has no control about how their work will be received or interpreted, as what each listener hears and gets out of their work will be – to some extent – entirely unique.

Which got me thinking a little about what we do here at NCS – namely, trying to process our own thoughts, reactions, and emotional responses to music into words in the hope that they resonate with people (or, at least, provide them with some useful context) despite the fact that the essence, the qualia, of our experiences(s) can never be fully transmitted to another person (and, even if they were… how would we ever know?).

But still we try, because we want to share our experience with others and because we want others to have that experience for themselves… and while no two listeners are ever likely to respond in the exact same way to Immerse, the new album from borderless Black Metal collective Acathexis, we have no doubt that those with ears to hear it will come to love it as we have.

Continue reading »

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