SHORT BUT SWEET: PROMISCUITY – “BASIC INSTINCT”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Oct 272013
 

Israel’s Promiscuity proudly wear their influences like patches on the vest: Right there on the third track of their hellaciously romping EP Basic Instinct is a cover of Celtic Frost’s “Into the Crypts of Rays” from 1984’s Morbid Tales. That album, we know now, was a pivot point in the history of heavy music, along with rough contemporaries such as Bathory’s first full-length and Venom’s Black Metal, and Promiscuity are quite unabashedly happy to plant their flag in the same ground, albeit 30 years later.

Basic Instinct is an unholy stew of punk, speed metal, NWOBHM, and sulfuric acid — the kind of primitive, proto-black-thrash that conjures images of whisky-splashed moshpits in Lucifer’s favorite dive bar. With fairly simple, straight-ahead song structures, Promiscuity rely on the infernal infectiousness of their riffs and an array of screaming, unhinged guitar solos as the main source of their appeal — along with some truly venomous, echo-drenched vocals, the kind you can imagine came from gargling with a cocktail of crushed glass and lye. Continue reading »

BRAIN STEW: TERATISM, NECROSIS, THEOLOGIAN

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Oct 252013
 

I keep endless lists of music I mean to check out some day based on things I see or messages I receive. Unfortunately, time being in short supply, I never make it through everything. But last night I ticked off about a dozen items on the list and I picked these three with which to launch this Happy Friday. I picked them because in different ways they tend to mess with your brain, and collectively they create a nice stew bubbling inside the cranium.

TERATISM

This black metal band’s last release was an MLP entitled La Bas, which I reviewed here. All of those songs were recorded years ago though they were only officially released this past summer. But Teratism are working on their next album and they’ve recently made two demo tracks available on Bandcamp for a “pay what you want” price, under the title Prelude to the Second Death. While both songs contain eruptions of destructive blasting, they are for the most part slow and freighted with the weight of doom.

“Four Waters” is draped in sheets of radioactive guitar noise and harrowing feedback, which are pulled back in the song’s mid-section to reveal guitar notes that peal like funeral bells, the steady pulse of a bass, and the muffled thump of the drums. “Micturation Into the Tributary of Death” works with a similar funereal atmosphere, lacing it with eerie harmonic arpeggios that transform the music into a slow waltz of death. Both songs are deeply unsettling, and yet they are both almost beautiful in their utter bleakness. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: SEELENMORD — “…AND WE WILL FIND ONLY SOLITUDE, PART 1”

 Album Reviews, Free Shit, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 212013
 

(Andy Synn reviews the debut EP by Seelenmord, which is now available for free download on Bandcamp.)

It’s important to start off your week right. Most of us are heading back to work, and the Monday morning blues can easily get you down. So what better than a slice of darkly melodic, spirit-crushing black metal from Argentina, whose name roughly translates to “Soul Murder”?

And it’s free too!

The five tracks that make up this EP pick and mix a variety of influences from the black metal spectrum, melding the earthen grandeur of primordial Ulver with the relentless dominance of Anaal Nathrakh and the raw ferocity of early Gorgoroth, taking the listener on a wild journey of penitence and paranoia.

Though all the more overt trappings of the genre are present and correct – blitzing tremolo guitars, sacrilegious snare blasts, a raging undercurrent of bile and scorn – it’s the more subtle and artful touches which really make this EP stand out. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: CASKET / SEWERCIDE SPLIT

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Oct 162013
 


Delicious cover art by Kator.

In early November, Maryland-based Unholy Anarchy Records plans to release a 7″ split by two young bands who are new discoveries for me — Philadelphia-based Casket and Sewercide from Melbourne, Australia. Each band contributes one song to the split, and both of them are good.

CASKET

Casket’s offering is “Armed To the Teeth”. It thrashes and lashes with a firm whiphand, raising welts with a blaze of head-snapping riffs before splitting the skin wide open with a an off-speed beatdown. There’s more than a little hardcore punk blood that courses through the thrash spine of the song, and a miasma of ghoulish death metal fouls the air in that breakdown. Good vocal foulness, too, in a mix of rancid, nails-on-the-chalkboard rants and guttural grunts. And finally, there’s just the right amount of gauziness to the production, because you need a wrapping of gauze to soak up the blood.

SEWERCIDE

Sewercide’s track is “Vector of Disease”, and it’s a romping, wrecking, open-throttle thrasher. You can smell the exhaust from this well-tuned engine, along with a strong whiff of sulphur, because it’s plenty evil. Rippling lead guitar lines, an eye-watering solo, and turn-on-a-dime tempo changes help make the song one worth coming back, too. Standout drumwork and unhinged vocal vehemence, too. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BOG OF THE INFIDEL — “TO CORRUPT YOUR SONS AND LUST AFTER YOUR DAUGHTERS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Oct 142013
 

The mail came. It included a soft brown package with an unexpected CD inside, the CD adorned with the cover you see above. I gazed upon it, I read the band’s name and the album’s title, and the tumblers in my mind fell into a certain configuration. I felt sure I knew what the music would sound like: guitars like razors scraping glass, an unceasing barrage of muffled blasting drums, vocals sulfurous enough to kill all the insects in my house, a lo-fi torrent of raw and ripping black metal. And that would have been fine, but maybe not worth writing about.

But this four-song EP by Bog of the Infidel (from Providence, Rhode Island) proved to be more than I was expecting. It is indeed black metal, and the vocals did indeed save me the cost of an exterminator, though they are more in the vein of hoarse, harsh roars and howls than demonic shrieking. But I sure wasn’t expecting that the opening track would be a bright, vivid, classically influenced acoustic guitar instrumental. And that was just the start of the surprises. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: A PREGNANT LIGHT — “STARS WILL FALL”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Oct 132013
 

I knew nothing about A Pregnant Light before listening (repeatedly) to the band’s latest two-song release, Stars Will Fall.  What I had to go on, besides the recommendation of NCS supporter Utmu, was artwork consisting of a photo of Hedy Lamarr from Ziegfeld Girl, the band’s self-chosen genre label of “purple metal”, and lyrics that although poetic and mysterious were also emotional and angst-ridden, speaking of “panic and love”, falling stars, being caught between the sun and the moon. I nearly made a fast U-turn back toward the realms of the eviscerating and destructive music where I usually dwell, because I interpreted these signposts as warnings of a possible trainwreck ahead.

But I thought, it’s only two songs, and although they’re longer than average, I can make my U-turn at any point before getting far enough into the wreckage to do permanent damage. Forging ahead turned out to be a really smart move.

Those two songs blur the lines between black metal, hardcore, post-metal, punk, and post-punk — and who knew all those lines were close enough together to be blurred? The music rides on rocking rhythms, with “Stars Will Fall” the more hard-driving and rambunctious of the two and “My Life Outside the Party” somewhat moodier. But the key to both of them is that they’re tremendously infectious, with melodic hooks and compelling rhythms that exert a strong magnetic pull. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: KRODA — “VARULVEN”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Oct 072013
 

The last album released by the Ukrainian band Kroda was last year’s Live Under Hexenhammer: Heil Ragnarok!. As the name suggests, it was a live recording, and an excellent one. The band’s last studio release was Schwarzpfad from 2011 (reviewed here), which I thought was one of the best albums of that year in any genre. Almost all of Kroda’s releases are now available on Bandcamp.

Last Friday, a new Kroda EP appeared on Bandcamp under the name Varulven. It’s currently available as a “name your own price” digital-only download, though it’s planned for release on CD next month via Purity Through Fire. Varulven is a compilation of four tracks recorded at various times over the last five years. Die-hard fans of the band will be interested in this even if only to complete their collection of Kroda’s discography, but it’s really very good in its own right.

The title track is a studio recording from 2011. It’s a cover of a traditional Nordic song (the name of which means “Werewolf”), and the band describe it as “an experiment in viking-rock style music”. On this track, Kroda weave together elements of folk music (complete with the sounds of a ghostly flute, tumbling drums, and pure female vocals) and pagan metal (jagged growls, slightly distorted riffs and arpeggios, and tremolo-picked guitar melody), setting them to a rock beat. The melody itself, though quite catchy, has a dark undercurrent, which Kroda enhance with the sound of owls, wolves, and sinister whispering, turning it into something that’s haunting. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT – “GOLIATH”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Oct 022013
 

(NCS guest writer Austin Weber put this New York band’s 2012 debut album Abominamentvm on his NCS list of last year’s best records. Now he reviews their new two-track release, Goliath.)

For the uninitiated, Imperial Triumphant are arguably one of the best new US black metal bands around. These New York City natives take a technically oriented approach to unorthodox black metal that is fueled by an unyielding desire to spread the anti-gospel.  Last year they released their debut album Abominamentvm, an impressive effort that distorted and contorted black metal in a unique way, deconstructing its tropes and showcasing audible bass playing, which is something that sadly is far too uncommon in black metal. A Deathspell Omega influence seems to be apparent, and yet their music also contains traces of old school black metal fury, occasional lumbering doominess, and unsettling psychedelic drone bursts, all of which do much to set them apart from being merely a product of one strain of influences.

The artwork is a good introduction and foil to Goliath‘s musical monstrosity. Your eyes are drawn immediately to a mammoth elephant, but as you look down you realize the beast has squashed a man’s head into a vicious oblivion of blood. That’s kind of how it feels to listen to this. Though Goliath is merely two songs, there’s a lot to immerse yourself in, as both are equally packed-to-the-brim, tour de force experiences. Continue reading »

FŌR: “BLAKAZ ASKǬ HERTÔ”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Sep 292013
 

It would be very difficult to describe the attraction of FŌR’s new EP Blakaz Askǭ Hertô to anyone who is not already convinced about the power of blackened death metal and susceptible to the apocalyptic atmospherics that the style is capable of creating. It would be flat-out impossible to do that for anyone who is not already far along the left-hand path of extreme metal in general. Despite these challenges, I shall forge ahead.

Nothing played with a guitar and bass is truly devoid of melody — every string does represent a note. But FŌR have tuned the instruments so low, have so ramped up the distortion levels, and have made such abundant use of repeated tremolo-picked chords and feedback that what most people would call “melody” has been banished to some inaccessible netherworld. The songs are usually dominated by horrific grinding noise, occasionally segmented by massive hammering riffs that brutishly bludgeon like the ultimate hammer of doom.

The dense shroud of guitar and bass radioactivity is monolithic, impenetrable, suffocating, like a slow-moving mass of corrosive static. It’s a nearly relentless assault on the senses that reaches its apex in the 10-minute closing track “Lineage of the Amorphous”, in which one chord after another is struck in slow progression and the droning, fuzzed-out feedback just hangs there with the roentgen levels in the red zone until the the pick hand attacks again. Continue reading »

AUS DER TRANSZENDENZ / LUSTRE SPLIT: “VIXERUNT / LIFE FLOWERS OF GOLD”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Sep 222013
 

I mentioned in passing on 9/11 that Lustre’s 2013 album Wonder may be the most beautiful record I’ve heard this year. So when I noticed yesterday that Lustre has also contributed to a forthcoming split, I had to investigate.

The split will be jointly released on vinyl next month by I, Voidhanger and ATMF, with cover art by Francesco Gemelli. Lustre’s contribution is a song entitled “Like Flowers of Gold”. Like so much of Wonder, the song casts a hypnotic spell, its seductive melody repeating in an extended loop against a backdrop of deep, groaning tones and ghostly/ghastly whispers. Atmospheric music such as this need not be complex nor instrumentally intricate to be emotionally affecting, but it does need to be well-written, and this Swedish one-man band does have that talent.

The second band on the split are new to me. Austria’s Aus der Transzendenz produced a debut album (Breed of A Dying Sun) last year, and this new song “Vixerunt” appears to be the band’s first new music since then. Where Lustre’s track brings a moonlit, pastoral ambience, “Vixerunt” races like a storm front, yet it is also an atmospheric piece of music. Continue reading »

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