AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): FOSA — “DEMO MMXVI”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Apr 032018
 

 

This isn’t a premiere in the usual sense of the word, or the usual way in which we use it. The recording is a 2016 demo, first released digitally, and even the tape release that’s the occasion for this feature is a couple of months old. But I’m calling it a premiere anyway because the odds are that this is the first time most of you will be hearing the music. I can promise you that you won’t soon forget it.

Demo MMXVI is the first release by a Chilean band named Fosa, and it’s also the first release by a new Santiago-based label and distro named Unpleasant Records (a name that you’ll see again quite soon here, because we’re also hosting a stream of the label’s second release.)

There’s no satisfying short-hand genre phrase for Fosa’s music on this demo. Crust and black metal are probably the dominant ingredients, but there are others, including sludge, harsh noise, and regular doses of lysergic acid. The end result is an experience that’s incredibly intense and undeniably traumatic. The sounds are primally powerful, titanically heavy, and murderous in their attempts to fracture the listener’s sanity. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): QUANTUM HIERARCHY — “NEUTRON BREED”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Mar 302018
 

 

Neutron Breed is so blindingly explosive, so uncaged in its dedication to sonic violence, and so eye-popping in the speed and technical precision of its execution that it has the capacity to suck the air from your lungs while it turbocharges your own pulse rate. Worry about breathing later… prepare now to give yourself over to a maniacally vicious death metal rocket ride.

Neutron Breed is the new EP by the Italian band Quantum Hierarchy, which is being released today by Everlasting Spew Records, and it’s our privilege to help spread the word through the premiere of a full music stream. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): MYRHOLT — “MØRKETID”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 272018
 

 

The Norwegian musician and vocalist Ole Alexander Myrholt has had a long and prolific career, one that began more than two decades ago and ranged across a multitude of groups and personal projects, but seemed to enter a hiatus around 2011 when his band Tremor was put on hold indefinitely. However, something changed when Myrholt stepped in to play drums for the Norwegian black metal band Mork in December 2016.

Since then, adopting the name Myrholt, he has been recording again, performing all instruments and vocals. Myrholt released a multitude of singles and two albums last year, as well as a two-track EP named Vinter earlier this month. And now a new EP entitled Mørketid has been readied for release, which we are happy to present it to you through a full stream of its five tracks. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ALTAR OF PERVERSION, NIGREDO, HÄXENZIJRKELL, MORTUUS UMBRA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Mar 252018
 

 

One benefit of Andy Synn’s new Waxing Lyrical series as a regular Saturday post at NCS is that it has freed me to do other things, since I no longer feel compelled to concoct something of my own on Saturdays. Most “normal” people might take advantage of the opportunity to indulge in slothfulness. It seems that my own “abnormality” instead leads to two-part SHADES OF BLACK posts on Sunday.

ALTAR OF PERVERSION

The most recent interview posted at the on-line edition of Bardo Methodology was an especially thought-provoking one, a discussion by proprietor Niklas Göransson with Calus, one of the two men behind the Italian black metal band Altar of Perversion. The on-line version of the interview is only an excerpt from a much longer and even more in-depth conversation in the print edition of Bardo Methodology #3, which I will be anxious to read when my copy arrives in the mail.

What I read on-line revived some of my own lines of thought about the intellectual and emotional inspirations and underpinnings of black metal, which I might finally decide to write about in the near future. But it also contains a fascinating segment on the audio frequency of 432 Hertz (referred to as “Pythagorean tuning” when applied to the tuning of musical instruments) and its connections to nature, as well as its numerical synchronicities with a host of ancient writings and esoteric teachings. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: WITCHTRIP — “COSMIC CAULDRON”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 142018
 

 

We were told that the Canadian band Witchtrip includes all the members of Winnipeg’s Occvlt Hand other than the vocalist — so, basically the same band with a different singer. That was reason enough to check out the two tracks on Witchtrip’s debut EP, Cosmic Cauldron, because we were big fans of Occvlt Hand’s 2017 album, Not Everyone Deserves A Happy Ending. We gleefully premiered a track from that album, and put that same track on our list of 2017’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.

Now, one would expect that Witchtrip’s music would be different from Occvlt Hand’s, despite the significant overlap in members. Otherwise, why choose a different name? And in fact, the music is quite different. And perhaps it should also come as no surprise that the music is nevertheless really, really good — as you’re about to discover for yourselves through our premiere of Cosmic Cauldron in advance of its release on March 16th by Possessed Records. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BLACK MARE AND OFFRET — “ALONE AMONG MIRRORS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Mar 032018
 

 

If the two songs on this new split aren’t a perfect match, I don’t know what is. It’s not that they’re twins, not even fraternal twins. It’s that they complement each other so beautifully. I don’t know to what extent the artists shared their ideas before completing the compositions, but the experience of listening to the two songs together is so enthralling that you might think they were working together through a Vulcan mind meld.

Entitled Alone Among Mirrors, the split consists of one song by Black Mare, the solo project of L.A. musician Sera Timms (Ides of Gemini, Black Math Horseman), and one song by Offret, the solo project of Russian musician Andrey Prokofiev. It was released just yesterday on 7″ vinyl and digitally by Dark Operative. Continue reading »

CATCHING UP ON 2017: CORAXO / DEADSPACE / SUCCUMB TO DEMISE

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Feb 232018
 

 

(In this post Andy Synn reviews three 2017 releases, by Coraxo (Finland), Deadspace (Australia), and Succumb To Demise (Kentucky).)

 

Despite the fact that I’m already overwhelmed by new and upcoming releases – next week alone I have Slugdge, Ancst, and Rites of Thy Degringolade lined up to review – I’ve decided to take some time out of my busy schedule to catch up on three albums which were released late last year and which, as a result, didn’t necessarily receive the coverage they deserved. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: REBEL WIZARD — “GREAT ADDICTIONS TO BLINDINGLY DARK, WORLDLY LIFE”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Feb 202018
 

 

The first track on the new Rebel Wizard EP, “The sickness of all knowledge“, begins with an excerpt from a recording of a public talk given in 1981 in Amsterdam by the philosopher, speaker, and writer Jiddu Krishnamurti (b.1895 – d.1986). It reads as follows:

So knowledge has become all important
but knowledge is never complete.
Knowledge about anything is still incomplete,
will always be incomplete.
Therefore knowledge always goes with ignorance,
knowledge always lives within the shadow of ignorance.

Except you never make it to the final word “ignorance” at the opening of this EP. The word is cut off by a shocking explosion of sound. It’s as if you were calmly unlocking the door to your home while thinking deep thoughts, and becoming immolated by a blast furnace upon opening it. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: WIEGEDOOD, ATRA VETOSUS, JUBAL, AGRONA, LUSTRE, KALMANKANTAJA, BLUTVIAL

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  10 Responses »
Feb 182018
 


Wiegedood – photo by Stefaan Temmerman

 

Saturdays and Sunday mornings have become challenging times for me in the thinking I allocate to these SHADES OF BLACK posts. Having listened off and on to a lot of new black metal during the preceding week, I think I’ve figured out by mid-day Saturday what to include, and then, by coincidence or cunning, a whole bunch of new stuff lands in my lap.

Yesterday was a prime example. Having narrowed my choices, they suddenly ballooned again, thanks to late-breaking recommendations from friends and readers, and e-mails from bands and labels. The flood of communications into our chaotic command center usually dwindles dramatically on Saturdays, but those that persist tend to focus on music from the black realms, and I tend to pay attention to them more quickly because everything else has kind of cleared out.

What to do? Well, one thing I did was to expand the volume of music in today’s post. And given my renewed resolution to cut down on the number of premieres I agree to write during the week, another option will be to collect more new music in a blackened vein for a week-day edition of this series.

WIEGEDOOD

I do my best not to read comments about music on the internet (or comments about almost anything else) unless they were written by friends or respected musicians, or unless they appear at NCS. I can guess that if I made an exception to that resolution in the case of Wiegedood’s new song and video, the majority of them would be juvenilia about penises. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): MIDNARTIIS, WINDSWEPT

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Feb 112018
 

 

Welcome to the regular Sunday edition of this column, which follows the irregular one I posted yesterday after failing to complete it earlier as planned. I’ve divided it into two parts because there’s quite a lot of music in today’s post, with six bands and four complete releases in addition to advance tracks from two others that are on the way.

On top of that, the first three of the complete releases include “long-form” songs. All of them are examples of emotionally powerful atmospheric black metal. But after those three I decided to make a sharp stylistic turn (actually, several sharp turns).

P.S.: I’m rarely cool, calm, and collected when writing about music; I only write about what I like and tend to let the words reflect the excitement… and I really like what you’re about to hear.

MIDNARTIIS

Two years ago I reviewed and premiered a wonderful album named Waves of Degradation by the Texas folk-influenced atmospheric black metal band Krigsgrav. It was the band’s fourth album but my first serious exposure to their music, and it was a hell of a discovery.

Krigsgrav are far along in their work on a new album, but their former bassist Wes Radvansky, who seems to have parted ways with the band since the last Krigsgrav album, has his own solo project, the name of which is Midnartiis. Continue reading »

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