SHADES OF BLACK: SKALDR, STELLAR FOREST, JZOVCE, SPECTRAL LORE

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Jan 052025
 

I had a decision to make that I knew would have a significant impact on how many new releases I could cover in this Sunday column. That decision is discussed in the intro to today’s last item. I made the decision in a way that forced me to cut down the total, and leaves a lot of other songs buzzing in the back of my head as if clamoring for the attention I didn’t give them.

But I better truncate this opening verbiage before I have to further truncate the selections. In short, I’m beginning with three singles, and then moving to a very long demo at the end.

SKALDR (U.S.)

The first single today is a song from this Virginia band’s new album Saṃsṛ (their second full-length overall). I’ve been meaning to include it in one of these columns for weeks, but one thing or another has kept delaying the follow-through on my intentions. The song’s name is “The Crossing.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SABHANKRA, ANDE, HOLY DEATH, MEGATON COMMUNION, CRACKWHÖRE, GASH FAITH, THE FALL OF MOTHER EARTH, ЧЕРНОПЛОДЬ

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Jan 042025
 

 

We’ve reached the end of a long holiday period and that left me feeling glum last night, morose over the realization that the rat race will resume on Monday. I felt much better after going through a big batch of songs I wanted to consider for this Saturday roundup.

Apart from enjoying the music, I’m enjoying the idea of how wobbly these eight selections will leave people who make it through all of them; there are many twists and turns along the way.

I arranged the choices in four two-band blocks. This doesn’t mean the selections in each part sound alike, but I did perceive some connections, except in the final two. Those two are together at the end only because I didn’t want to leave them out. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON NEW YEAR’S DAY: AVULSED, CRAWLING CHAOS, ARGWAAN, SERPENTS OF PAKHANGBA, AWRIZIS, STRESS TEMPLE, GROUND SWEAT, HUSMANSKOST, BYFROST

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Jan 012025
 


Fireworks at the Seattle Space Needle last night (photo by Sigma Sreedharan / KOMO #SoNorthwest Photography)

(written by Islander)

Happy New Year to all of you! May the turn of the calendar page begin leading you to many good things over the coming year, even if it mainly leads you to still write “2024” in your date entries over the next few weeks.

Yesterday we finished the main part of our annual LISTMANIA series, and I posted a “wrap up” for it earlier today. All those lists verified what we already knew as the past year crawled by, i.e., that 2024 was another great interval for metal, even if it was a garbage fire in many other respects.

We have abundant reasons to expect that 2025 will also bring us abundant metallic goodness and greatness, and some of those reasons are already concretely apparent, witness the music I picked for this New Year’s Day roundup (though some of it also comes from the later days of December — and a couple songs are from 2010!). Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BEEHIVE REVOLT, EDEN RAYZ

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Dec 292024
 

I had ideas ready for this weekly post today, and notes about the music I’d selected. When I was ready to begin writing this morning, my desktop computer shit the bed (basically, it wouldn’t start up and showed an error symbol).

I spent the next two hours following a variety of Apple instructions sourced from my laptop, none of which worked. Now I have to take the computer to the nearest Apple Store this afternoon, which is about a 90-minute commute from where I live. This is a much more miserable way to spend the day than I’d expected, but of course you and I can imagine worse ways.

In a state of extreme mental frustration and with much of the morning gone, I thought about abandoning this column for today, but as you can see, I didn’t. However, it doesn’t included all the selections I wanted to cover, or even all the words I wish I could have written about the ones below. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: OBSCURE SPHINX, THIS GIFT IS A CURSE, SH-BO-OO-OM, BANK MYNA, MISANTHROPÆ

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Dec 212024
 


Obscure Sphinx

(written by Islander)

It seems like the end of the year is coming up in a big rush. It’s now four days before Christmas and the start of Hanukkah and 10 days before New Year’s Eve, a block of time when many people do something different from what they normally do (like taking time off from work), and other people feel grumpier about what they normally do because they’re still having to do it (like working).

We’re still here of course, and not even feeling grumpy about it. For a bunch of reasons I won’t bore you with, it’s the fanatically commercialized “holiday season” that makes me feel grumpy, and it’s continuing to pound away on this blog that helps get me through it.

Part of what we’re pounding on, of course, is year-end LISTMANIA. Even on a Saturday I nailed another list to the door. Next week we’ll have lists from at least four more of our writers, plus a bag of odds and ends from Neill Jameson.

But for now, just more new music — quite a lot of it actually. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): HORSE BUTCHER — “HORSE BUTCHER”

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Dec 192024
 

(written by Islander)

It’s not enough that a particularly dismal and disgusting year on Earth will soon gasp its last rotten and rattling breath — Horse Butcher have arisen to murder it with one of the most vicious and mind-mauling releases of the last 12 months. It’s as if they decided this bastard year didn’t deserve to live even another two weeks.

Given how often our putrid glorious site throws emotionally and aurally assaulting sounds at visitors, it may seem like an exaggeration to say that about Horse Butcher‘s self-titled EP. Trust me, it’s no exaggeration.

Sentient Ruin Laboratories, which will release the EP on December 20th, also isn’t exaggerating when they call the record “a disfigured onslaught of gore-fucked bestial deathgrind worshipping directly at the altar of Carcass, Archgoat, Disgorge, Impetigo and Pissgrave” — “six tracks and twenty minutes of neanderthalian carnage and slaughterhouse madness.”

But you’ll see this for yourselves right quick because today we’re hosting the EP’s premiere. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DREAMING DEATH — “SINISTER MINISTER”

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Dec 172024
 

(written by Islander)

Band name: Dreaming Death. Record title: Sinister Minister. That lovely queasy-green cover art festooned with tentacles and claws. That should be enough to lure you into the music on the debut EP we’re streaming in this post. If it isn’t, you’ll soon see a photo of the band ready and eager to beat you to death with a shovel. That ought to seal the deal.

But just in case, we’ll add that Dreaming Death‘s lineup incudes Pahl Hodgson (guitars, vocals) and Ross Duncan (bass, vocals), known for their work with Beyond Mortal Dreams and Oath Of Damnation, plus drummer Matt “Skitz” Sanders, and further add that their EP lured Lavadome Productions into releasing it this coming Friday — the label’s only release in 2024.

You need any more reasons to listen? Nah, you probably don’t, but providing reasons is the reason for my existence, so you’re going to get some more whether you need it or not. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BØNES, FUMES, KRIEG, WITHDRAWAL, LYCOPOLIS, NECRODEATH, PILLAR AMONGST WILLOWS, PLAGUEWIELDER, TER ZIELE

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Dec 082024
 

I had time to pull together a large collection of music for this usual Sunday post, but not enough time to pull together the usual long-winded introduction. So we’ll just have to get right to it (please, stop applauding).

As I did in yesterday’s roundup, I organized the choices in alphabetical order by band name. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ABDUCTION, ANCIENT TOME, FANE, MONASTR, MONTE PENUMBRA, PHRENELITH, RELICS OF HUMANITY, VIOLET COLD

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Dec 072024
 


Abduction – photo by Jack Armstrong

(written by Islander)

Bandcamp Friday would have been a better time for this roundup, but I couldn’t get it done in time. Yesterday was the last one of those for 2024, and it’s not clear if Bandcamp will keep it going next year. They announced the 2024 schedule on March 11th of this year, so it’s really too early to say. Obviously, a big horde of us hope Bandcamp continues the tradition.

Well, near misses only count in horseshoes and hand grenades, so my near miss with this roundup probably doesn’t count. Still, even with Friday gone, picking up the releases collected below won’t cost you anything more, even though less of the purchase money will go to the labels and artists.

Once again I resorted to arranging the music in alphabetical order by band name. To the extent there’s any musical through-line here, anything that explains why I picked these songs instead of the many others I considered, it might be that they all made me… uncomfortable… in different ways. And it turns out that the arrangement will throw you back and forth, tempo-wise. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AXIOMA — “LIVE TOTALITY”

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Dec 042024
 

(written by Islander)

In April of this year the Cleveland post-black metal band Axioma traveled to Lorain, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie, to witness a solar eclipse. But they didn’t just witness it, they simultaneously provided their own soundtrack for it.

Building up to the eclipse and continuing through it, they performed an extensive instrumental piece on the lakeshore that they’d written for the occasion, aptly named “Live Totality“, and some friends filmed it, creating a video that includes gorgeous overhead scenes of the band’s setting and the lake.

On December 6th, through their label Stained Glass Torments, Axioma will release that song on a vinyl and digital EP that shares the song’s name. The EP includes three more subsequently recorded tracks, and we have all the songs for you to stream today. Continue reading »

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