OBSCURITIES – VOLUME III: MOVING RIGHT ALONG

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Mar 052024
 

(Daniel Barkasi returns with another collection of album reviews and streams today, focusing on records that dropped in February 2024.)

Surprise – we’re back like Legia Warsaw Ultras! What in the hell am I talking about? Quite simply the height of professional level trolling, performed by Polish football Ultras. These groups can be extreme (to put it mildly), but credit is due for a move this epic. Me returning for February can’t come close, but hopefully we’ll be able to leave you with some music that you won’t soon forget.

‘Tis been an excellent month, as you’ve seen by the plethora of quality releases covered here at NCS. The end of winter is slowly approaching, and the release schedule only gets more packed in from here. Counting Hours brought the dim melancholy, Keres crushed us with a death metal onslaught, Borknagar is still soldering on at a high level, and Solbrud put out the musical equivalent of a full marathon (way less physical exertion required).

This month brings quite a sampling that’s a tad heavy on the post-black atmospheric variety, but variety is indeed the spice of metal happiness, so there’s also a mix of progressive, death, black and doom in various forms to gnaw into like a Mackinaw Peach. Just don’t lose your taste buds when they’re in season. Buford’s got your back, though. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 042024
 

(Andy Synn presents four artists/albums from February that may have flown under your radar)

While I obviously love putting together these “Things You May Have Missed” columns and using them as an opportunity to highlight a handful of bands that you (and we) might otherwise have overlooked, one thing I don’t love is having to compromise and make hard choice about who to include, and who to leave out.

Sure, keeping it to just four entries is a lot easier on my typing fingers (and a lot less demanding of my time) but I absolutely hate the fact that I have to leave so many deserving releases off the list.

So, please, as well as listening to the quartet of releases I’ve selected to highlight this month, try and make some time to check out the latest records from Fange, Pyra, Stiriah, Devine Defilement, Vanta, Terramorta, Theophonos… and, well, I could go on!

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MISOTHEIST, DEATHLIKE DAWN, GLYPH, DARK PLAGUE, BLESTEMAT, BEHOLDER, VALRAVNE, PÂLEFROID

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Mar 032024
 

Here’s the way today’s collection of music goes: The first four choices include two albums and two singles that I thought fit well together. The music by all four bands is unmistakably harsh and hostile, but it’s also adventurously inventive and head-twisting, laced with the kind of unpredictable and unexpected elaborations that might invoke in some people’s minds the amorphous label “avant-garde”, or at least the term “unorthodox”.

After that I’ve included four other individual songs as bonuses. Later I’ll explain why I used that word to explain their presence here, if you make it that far (and you damn well should). Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: PELICAN — “ADRIFT / TENDING THE EMBERS”

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Mar 012024
 

It’s another Bandcamp Friday today, and the electronic ether is flooded with new possibilities. I have dozens of recommendations I could make, in addition to the dozens my colleagues and I have been making every day since the last one of these Fridays. But the one I decided to pick out from the virtual deluge is here because… it takes me back….

In looking through our many past writings about Pelican, I found the first appearance in a list posted by one of the two other people who started NCS with me more than 14 years ago, a list posted just two weeks after we began (with no idea where we would go or for how long). And of course that wasn’t the last time we highlighted Pelican‘s music — many more features followed.

Even 14+ years ago, Pelican weren’t newcomers. Just a few weeks before that list I mentioned, they had released their fourth album, What We All Come to Need. Since then, two more albums have followed, and a few EPs, but the pace of the releases hasn’t been as intense as it once was.

That’s not shocking, given that the life of the band is now about 23 years, and the slower pace of output just makes the appearance of something new even more welcome. The new thing we have now, as of today, is a two-song EP named Adrift/Tending the Embers, and although nostalgia has admittedly played a role in why I decided to help spread the word about it, that’s not the only reason. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): OPPRESSIVE DESCENT — “SULFURIC WRATH”

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Mar 012024
 

As you may know, Oppressive Descent is a black metal band from Portland, Oregon whose sole member Grond Nefarious has been a member of many other notable bands, as a quick glance at Metal Archives demonstrates. But Oppressive Descent is obviously far more than a side project, with a plethora of releases to its name beginning in 2016. That extensive discography includes five albums, the most recent of which is set for release on March 4th by Inferna Profundus Records.

The name of the new album, Sulfuric Wrath, stands as a big banner proclaiming the nature of the music within. But as you’ll learn through our premiere stream of the entire record on this Bandcamp Friday, it offers much more than corrosive burning rage — though it definitely does offer that as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): TRIJUMF — “TRIJUMF ILI SMRT – TRIJUMF”

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Feb 292024
 

This makes the third time this week that we’ve premiered an album set for release on March 1st (a Bandcamp Friday) by the UK label Death Prayer Records (the others being from Ilat Mahru and Celestial Sword). The subject today, very different from the preceding two, is the debut album by the Bosnian black metal band TRIJUMF. Its title is TRIJUMF ILI SMRT – TRIJUMF (“Triumph or Death – Triumph”).

We don’t know much about the band, including who is in it, but we can infer from the group’s name, the album’s title, and the song names that their motivation derives from the atrocities that wrecked their country during the so-called Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995, and perhaps from even older conflicts. To triumph is the order of the day, and “NEVER FORGIVE, NEVER FORGET” is the epilogue.

In giving voice to their inspirations TRIJUMF‘s album provides four very long songs, ranging in length from 9 1/2 minutes to nearly 12, and in a word, they’re all remarkable. Continue reading »

THE SORROW OF BEING IMMACULATE: “CHURCH MUSIC FOR SATANISTS”

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Feb 292024
 

(DGR has left his usual comfort zones far behind, lured away by the Welsh band whose new EP is the subject of his review below.)

Sometimes in the process of wandering the decrepit halls and ancient ruins of metal, detector, pick-axe, and trowel in hand in the hopes of coming across something interesting that you can help spread out to a wider audience, you’ll come across something that you know isn’t directly for you, but boy howdy, do you know a whole lot of people who will absolutely be into it.

Those adventures are fun in part because you have the job now of trying to find someone on the site who may be interested in covering it or, the more likely option, you yourself get to go on an adventure of trying out something and seeing if it lands with you. Something may resonate with you, who knows?

That’s how we have landed at the doorstep of The Sorrow Of Being Immaculate, a name which floated across the proverbial – if not perpetually on fire – writer’s desk here approximately one time but somehow managed to grab attention based off of the album title alone. Because, even after fourteen-plus years of existence, how could we not be tempted to look into something entitled Church Music For Satanists? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SVART LOTUS — “SOM ET VONDT ÅR”

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Feb 282024
 

This makes the third time in almost four years that we’ve had the privilege of premiering music by the distinctive Norwegian band Svart Lotus. It’s been a privilege because every time has given us the occasion to be surprised, and each surprise has created further intrigue about what will come next.

Now what comes next is the band’s second album, Som et Vondt År. It will be released on March 1st by Hellstain Productions, but you’ll have the chance to hear all of it today. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, FEBRUARY 2024

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 282024
 

(February ends today — oh wait! there’s a leap day tomorrow! — but we’re close enough that Gonzo has returned with another end-of-month collection of recommended albums, six of them, with streams and his reviews below.)

Maybe it’s just me being overly cynical, but does anything good ever happen in February? Why does it occasionally have an extra day every few years? Why is it always shorter? Who comes up with this shit?

Perhaps I’m once again shouting into my void of choice, but that might be because I’m recovering from five days of being on my ass thanks to some kind of plague I contracted last week. It feels good to be functional enough to write coherently (well, somewhat) and I’m relishing every moment in which I no longer feel like a vat of nuclear waste.

Musically speaking, there was an overwhelming amount of quality releases that saw the light of day in January, and by the time you’re reading this, long-awaited new albums from both Job for a Cowboy and Darkest Hour will be out and reviewed by our own Andy Synn. What year is it?!

There’s also no shortage of heavy hitters in this column; some of which have graced us with a new album after several years of dormancy. Some names you’ll recognize, some you won’t. Who doesn’t love a good comeback, though? Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CELESTIAL SWORD — “NOCTURNAL DIVINITY”

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Feb 272024
 

Following Celestial Sword‘s release of its second album Dawn of the Crimson Moon in 2021, this enigmatic U.S. black metal solo project released a flurry of splits in what remained of that year, and one more in 2022, but then nothing in 2023. The pause suggested that some new evil was in the works, and sure enough, it has taken shape in the form of a new album named Nocturnal Divinity that’s now set for release by Death Prayer Records on March 1st.

For those who might only now be learning about Celestial Sword, Nocturnal Divinity provides a fine jumping-on point, as well as an enticement to go back and experience the music that preceded it. As for jumping on, you can do that right now because today we present a full stream of the new record.

Of course, if you want to pause mid-jump, suspended in air, you can peruse our thoughts about where you’ll be landing on the far side. Continue reading »

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