(Andy Synn shares some words of wisdom, and warning, about the duplicitous, dichotomous, and devastating new album from Defacement)
Everyone knows that the common trajectory for bands is for them to get mellower and more melodic – maybe a little proggier, here and there, but still more accessible overall – as their career goes on.
But what the hell would such a transition even sound like in the context of a band like Defacement?
Today we’re fiendishly pleased to premiere Under the Blacklight of Divine, the debut EP from the Indonesian band Demon Sacrifice, which will officially be released tomorrow by the Indonesian label Ironbound Records.
We are “fiendishly pleased” because Demon Sacrifice‘s music is indeed fiendish, and fiendishly clever. They bring to the table a mixture of visceral punk beats, howling vocal terrors, and the kind of black metal that gets its hooks in the head but also sounds thoroughly supernatural.
They claim “indirect” influence from the likes of Bathory, Darkthrone, Devil Master, Spectral Wound, and Tribulation, and you’ll understand the use of the word “indirect” when you hear the music, because it’s not a blatant copy any of those bands. Continue reading »
Here at NCS we like to think that in deciding what music to write about we avoid getting stuck in any ruts. Variety, after all, is a powerful antidote to the poison of boredom. And besides, we don’t want people to get too confident in thinking they know in advance what they’re going to experience whenever they land here. If our choices don’t at least occasionally pull people out of their “comfort zones”, then we’re failing by our own lights.
Having said that, the album we’re premiering below is in almost all ways vastly different from the music that populates our own ever-expanding spectrum of musical coverage. Because it is so different, there may be a risk that some of our visitors will shy away from it. However, I fervently hope that won’t happen, because Daimon, Devil, Dawn is a most skilled form of sonic sorcery that should not be missed. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn finds himself inspired once more – in more ways than one – by the music of Uprising)
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of musical escapism, that’s for sure, and I love songs about gods and monsters, mysterious mountain kingdoms and crazy cosmic phenomena as much as anyone.
But there’s also a time and a place for music with a message as well, and since 2016 – wow, has it really been that long? – Uprising (AKA the solo project of Waldgeflüster‘s Jan van Berlekom) have been spreading their anarchic, anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian message of resistance and revolt through the medium of some absolutely killer, riff-driven and punk-propelled Black Metal.
And, for better or worse, that message still rings true on their new album, which was released just last week.
Photo Credit: Francesco Esposito
For those of you who don’t treat our posts as among your daily essentials of life, or at least like a free oxygen mask in the vicinity of a chemical train derailment, I’ll mention again that I won’t have much time for metal this weekend.
Today is the start of an annual two-day outdoor gathering of toilers at my day job and their families. For some of us it began last night, something akin to an alcohol-fueled pre-fest for concert-goers. It was jolly, and left me somewhat jumbled this morning.
That relatively mild mental affliction, coupled with the fact that the real festivities will begin soon, have left me constrained in what I can do in this Saturday roundup. If you don’t see a Shades of Black collection tomorrow, you’ll know that my Sunday-morning affliction was more severe and my sleeping-in more prolonged. Continue reading »
(With the month of June now behind us, Daniel Barkasi returns to NCS with a collection of eight albums released in that month which have drawn his favor.)
No, we’re not about to break out into the chorus of “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Though to be completely transparent, I do enjoy the cheesiness of Bon Jovi. But we’re not talking about New Jersey hair rockers today, beyond this brief mention.
June has been a strange month that we mostly would like to forget. We endured a family tragedy that still has me rattled – things are settling, but loss hurts deeply and tends to linger. Always keep love at the forefront of everything you do, because nobody knows what awaits tomorrow. Words to live by from this rando. I know, I know – we’re about to go over a bunch of extreme metal and we’re talkin’ ‘bout love. Sorry, Van Halen – who also rules. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn makes some noise about the upcoming new album from Ceremony of Silence)
It’s a common refrain that certain genres – Metalcore, Deathcore, Djent (if we’re still using that word) – reached the point of oversaturation far too quickly, with the plethora of clones and copies often crowding out the more creative and/or innovative artists.
And while we can argue over the validity of this statement – like anything it’s a lot more nuanced, and a lot less black and white, than all that – I think we can all agree that you don’t hear this sort of rhetoric anywhere near as often when people talk about more overtly “underground” styles… even though it’s often just as true.
Case in point, the burgeoning “Dissodeath” genre (although, can we really still call it “burgeoning” when it began to coalesce into a distinct style over a decade ago?) has also rapidly reached the point of saturation, with the result being that – while most of the originators are still forging ahead and exploring the depths, and the limits, of their sound – it’s getting a little harder each month to really identify the stand-outs.
That’s not to say, however, that these stand-outs don’t exist, and with their new album (out tomorrow) Slovakia’s Ceremony of Silence look set to further establish themselves as one of the more notable acts in the ever-expanding disso-sphere.
The Depressick don’t disguise the emotional states that fuel their music. It’s right there in the name they chose, a representation of gloom so deep that the hopelessness becomes illness. It connects with the place they call home, a densely populated and historically impoverished suburb of Mexico City named Nezahualcoyotl. We’re told that the “negativity, misery, poverty, sickness and filth” of their environment contributes to their music’s bleakness.
The band’s gut-wrenching musical journey so far has produced the 2017 debut album Carcinoma and eight shorter releases and splits. And it truly has been a journey. They haven’t forsaken their dark roots in DSBM, but have allowed them to extend into other soils, and the results have become manifest in their forthcoming second album faded.exe, which we’re premiering below in advance of its July 19th release by Tragedy Productions/End My Life Records. Continue reading »
(Our contributor Vizzah Harri lives and works in Vietnam but is a native of South Africa, and on a recent return there he caught a great show in Cape Town featuring the bands named above. He sent us the following lively report, adorned by photos courtesy of Laura McCullagh and Slam Dank Productions.)
June 2022, intermittent light beams get blasted from the Oort cloud. 2 lightyears from Earth. In June this year the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Sutherland receives a message from outer space. Weirdly enough, instead of the technosignatures and quantum communication techniques that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has prepared for, it was in morse code:
Lucien Rudaux – Sur les Autres Mondes (defiled by adding morse digitally)
It immediately got sent to the SAAO headquarters in the suburb of… Observatory, Cape Town. Once deciphered it baffled astronomers the world over: Continue reading »
(In late June Reigning Phoenix Music released a new album by the Spanish band White Stones, and today we provide our writer DGR‘s interesting review of this new work.)
Much like an immortal Heinz condiment-themed musical group, we’re forever playing catch-up.
I could never claim nor want to pontificate about the inner workings of a group or their band dynamic. These sorts of things are private for a reason and more often than not maintained that way so that a group doesn’t just become the ‘such-and-such show’ with three other musicians hanging around. You could make some solid as a rock ballpark guesses with certain groups as to who is responsible for what, but the pontification is more intellectual exercise for fun than anything that could actually have an effect.
What I will say, though, is that every time I’ve listened to White Stones, it has been both reminder and revelation of just how important bassist Martín Méndez has been to Opeth‘s sound over the years. The projects are purposefully and determinedly different from one another – White Stones having been obtuse and strange since their launch with Kuarahy back in 2020 – but it’s hard not to recognize that dude’s bass playing and transpose it over the works he’s been involved in, only to realize how fiercely creative that other group’s rhythm section has always been, with White Stones bringing it to the forefront. Continue reading »