AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DEEMTEE — “STRANGE AEONS & DELIRIUMS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Dec 052023
 

Every durable edifice, even a musical one, must have a solid foundation.

Well, that’s what some people say, probably including most listeners. But music whose foundations are constantly shifting and skidding, as if caught in an earthquake or morphing like some hallucinatory vision, can be far more interesting, even dazzling, if the architect is as talented as the person behind the Spanish band Deemtee.

This observation certainly held true for Deemtee‘s debut album, the aptly named Flawed Synchronization With Reality, which we premiered and reviewed (at great length) four years ago. In attempting to describe it we shared comparative references to Deathspell Omega, Oranssi Pazuzu, Valborg, Blut Aus Nord, and Ved Buens Ende — and repeatedly emphasized how unpredictable (and extraordinary) it was.

Now it’s time for foundations to liquify again, because Deemtee has a new album coming our way on December 7th via the Spanish label Darkness Within (a sub-label of Darkwoods), It also has a very apt title, given the nature of the songs: Strange Aeons & Deliriums. Continue reading »

KRALLICE – MASS CATHEXIS 2: THE KINETIC INFINITE

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Dec 042023
 

(Andy Synn, our resident Krallice curator, offers his thoughts on the band’s new album)

Is there anything less surprising than a surprise Krallice release any more?

Not that it’s a bad thing by any means. Honestly, I love that the group continue to do things their own way and work to their own timescales, rather than trying to live up to any outside expectations or bow to external pressures.

But if you ask any group of metalheads (well, those of a more “underground” disposition, at least) the question “what band just dropped a brand-new album out of the blue?” I bet 9 out of 10 of them would immediately say Krallice without hesitation.

On their new album, however – their second of 2023 – the band have an even bigger surprise up their collective sleeve… a direct sequel, both stylistically and spiritually, to 2020’s Mass Cathexis.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: EITRIN, FUINÄEHOT

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Dec 032023
 

You know the old saying about situations when your eyes are bigger than your stomach? When you take on more food than you can possibly finish? That’s kind of my situation, musically, today.

Yesterday’s two-part roundup, which spilled over into today, was a big platter of delectables. What I still had sitting on the platter this morning (all the well-charred food) was just too much to get through, despite my appetite for it and the “clean your plate” philosophy with which my family raised me. Stacked on top of the two-part roundup, it probably would have been too much for you as well.

But, at the risk of an exploding gut, here are a few more servings.

EITRIN (France)

Who could possibly leave untouched a feast prepared by Vindsval (Blut Aus Nord), Marion (Mütterlein), and Dehn Sora (Throane) in celebration of Debemur Morti Productions‘ 20th anniversary? Not I. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (PART 2): HAUL, JAWLESS, AFRA

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Dec 032023
 

Promises to keep.

Yesterday in Part 1 of this roundup I said there would be a Part 2 and that it would include “three bands from the same archipelagic country, all of which fall into the big-surprise category”. And so, a day late, here’s Part 2. (There will still be a Shades of Black column later on today.)

As hinted yesterday, all three bands are from Indonesia. All three were new to my ears and all are very good, albeit in very different ways stylistically. Hence, the surprises, and my decision to include these three bands together in their own segment.

HAUL (Indonesia)

More than a decade after their first release and seven years after their last one, Haul returned this year with a new EP named Adamar. Transylvanian Recordings released it digitally and on tape on December 1st (I found out that Disaster Records also released it on CD last March).

Having heard nothing of Haul‘s previous releases, I gave it a listen because of Transylvanian‘s enthusiastic recommendation. Here’s part of that enthusiasm: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (PART 1): SVRM, MALIST, DEPARTURE CHANDELIER, VERGEL, EBOLA, THE STROYMACHINE, THE LORD AND MARTHE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Dec 022023
 

Yesterday I managed to crawl through the 300-400 Bandcamp alerts and e-mails that hit our in-box during the 24 hours of Bandcamp Friday, plus social media messages from a few of the people whose recommendations I pay attention to. I even managed to very quickly skim through e-mails from the day before.

Doing that, I saved a shitload of links, and then barely scratched the surface of them in listening. There were some big surprises in that pile, some from bands I knew about and even bigger ones from names I’d never heard of. I picked some to pass along to you today. I’ve saved some others for the Sunday column, which I hope I’ll get to.

I had so many picks for today that I decided to divide them into two parts. The second part includes three bands from the same archipelagic country, all of which fall into the big-surprise category. I haven’t yet written part 2, and because the hour is late, it will probably come tomorrow. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ABYSSAL TOMB — “BURIED”

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Nov 302023
 

We’re ghoulishly happy to help spread the word today about a new Australian death metal band, Abyssal Tomb, and their debut 5-track demo Buried, which will officially be released tomorrow.

Though the band is new, the members aren’t newcomers. The lineup consists of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Callinan from Galaxy and Sylvan Awe (whose fantastic new album we premiered here just yesterday), lyricist/vocalist Rohan Buntine (Battlegrave), and drummer Tim Wright (Munitions / Blunt Shovel).

They describe their aspirations simply and directly — to “celebrate death metal in one of its early forms, honouring bands such as Obituary, Morta Skuld and early Six Feet Under“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SYLVAN AWE — “PILGRIMAGE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Nov 292023
 

The artwork on the front of Sylvan Awe‘s new album Pilgrimage (their third) is one that will make most people stop in their tracks and stare for a while. It’s a slightly cropped and inverted image of a 1920 painting by the German artist Ferdinand Leeke, who died three years after completing it. The title is “Parsifal on the Way to the Grail Castle“.

Leeke seems to be best known for his depiction of scenes from Wagnerian operas, most of them commissioned by Richard Wagner’s son Siegfried after his father’s death. “Parsifal on the Way to the Grail Castle” doesn’t seem to be one of those 10 commissioned paintings, but may have been similarly influenced, given that Wagner did compose an opera called Parsifal, based on the legend of the Grail Knight.

What that legend has to do with Pilgrimage is open to conjecture, though Parsifal himself engaged in a pilgrimage back to the sanctuary where ailing Grail Knights kept watch over the Grail, after Parsifal vanquished the necromancer Klingsor and retrieved from him the Holy Spear (which pierced the side of Jesus as he died on the cross), ultimately reuniting it with the Grail. Continue reading »

PHOBOCOSM – FOREORDAINED

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 282023
 

(Andy Synn reviews the new album from Phobocosm, out next week on Dark Descent Records)

With all the digital ink that’s been spilled about Death Metal this year you’d think that more of it would have been dedicated to Canada’s Phobocosm.

Then again, perhaps the band’s gloomier, doomier brand of oppressive, post-Immolation heaviness is just a little too dark, and a little too demanding, to receive the same sort of wider acclaim which has been lavished on many of their more popular peers.

But the fact that it demands a little more from its audience also means that Foreordained offers more rewards in the long run.

Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): THUNRAZ — “BORDERLINE”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 282023
 

The Estonian band Thunraz, the solo project of Madis Jalakas, has been in a creative surge from its inception, releasing a pair of EPs and a pair of albums since 2018. If anything the surge has strengthened, because Thunraz is following its latest album Revelation (released about five months ago) with yet another album that comes out today, on CD and digital formats.

The new album is entitled Borderline, and it includes nine songs, one of which — “You and Me” — we premiered a few weeks ago, along with a head-spinning red-shifted video. Today, of course, we’ve got all of it for you. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ETT DÖDENS MASKINERI — “KULTURKRIGET”

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Nov 272023
 

Kulturkriget is the name of the forthcoming second album by the Swedish hardcore punk band Ett Dödens Maskineri, whose name seems to translate to “a machine of death“. As the album’s title forecasts, its lyrical themes explore “the tumultuous battleground of the culture war that saturates every facet of modern existence,” dissecting issues that range from “identity politics and media manipulation to ideological clashes.”

Anyone with eyes to see and ears to here knows that society in almost all of the world is fractured more severely than it has been in generations, and there seems no imminent way out of it, the fractures so deep and jagged that repairing them would seem to require some kind of wizardry beyond the capacity of mere mortals.

The music on Kulturkriget is undeniably in line with such thoughts — bringing forward intensely evocative melodies that are bleak and furious, heart-broken and seeking escape, desperate but defiant. The piercing and haunting power of the melodies and the relentless dynamism of the music is part of what makes the album stand well out from the pack, but it’s still a punk album at its core, and so it’s also raw and raging, confrontational and caustic, and a damn good antidote for anyone whose adrenaline is at low ebb. Continue reading »

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