SHORT BUT SWEET Archives - Page 71 of 114

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): HEAVEN SHALL BURN, ALLEGAEON, SEPUTUS, ORPHALIS, CENTENARY, ORTHOSTAT, OLDD WVRMS

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Jul 202016

In yesterday’s Part 1 of this large round-up, I said I would post Part 2 later the same day. Someday I will learn that part-time metal bloggers who have actual paying jobs and/or families who occasionally need their attention should not make forecasts of what they plan to do on the blog. Not even what they think they will accomplish later the same day, or even in the next hour. That’s just laying the groundwork for stepping on your own crank, so to speak.

Anyway, here’s Part 2, which unlike yesterday focuses on new or newish music that I wanted to recommend rather than simply announcements. One silver lining to the delay is that it enabled me to add the first item in this collection, which appeared late yesterday.

HEAVEN SHALL BURN

Our small band of beleaguered writers at NCS includes some ardent (perhaps even slavish) fans of Germany’s Heaven Shall Burn. I count my own self on the slavish end of the spectrum. And so yesterday was a banner day, because… Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: THE COMANCHEROS — “FOUR HORSEMEN”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Off Topic, SHORT BUT SWEET 3 Responses »

Jul 152016

(Andy Synn reviews the debut EP by The Comancheros, headquartered in Columbia, Missouri.)

As my third and final entry this week on the theme of bands beginning with “The” I’m venturing a little bit outside of our usual wheelhouse with the smooth and smoky brand of musical misery served up by The Comancheros.

But Andy, how are these guys in any way relevant to the NCS audience, I hear you ask?

Well, for one thing, one of their members just so happens to be a certain R. Michael Cook of the inimitable A Hill To Die Upon (who, I have it on good authority, are back in the saddle and working on new music themselves), and for another The Comancheros list their main influences as “Lynyrd Skynyrd, Willie Nelson, Judas Priest, and Dwight Yoakam”, which suggests to me that one or two of you might just find something to like on their new EP, Four Horsemen. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): EVIL PRIEST (SELF-TITLED EP)

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Jul 122016

Caligari Records has unearthed yet another underground gem, this time excavating the self-titled debut EP of Peruvian death-bringers Evil Priest from the dank pit of abomination where they dwell. In advance of the EP’s release later this week, we have overcome our fearful cowering in the face of this monstrosity and deliver unto you a full stream of its four tracks.

The opening number, “Icarus”, is the only part of the album that doesn’t try to maim and dismember the listener. Though not as violent and horrifying as what comes next, “Icarus” is still unsettling, an eerie collage of rushing wind, bird calls, chimes, and an exotic melodic chant that together function as a foreboding meditation before the storm breaks. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DIABOLICAL — “UMBRA”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 3 Responses »

Jul 052016

Diabolical’s new EP Umbra — which we give you the chance to hear in full today — is a multifaceted obsidian gem. Atmospherically forbidding and possessed of a grim, doomed grandeur for most of its length, Umbra is also savage — and at times wistful and meditative. It’s so well-conceived and expertly performed that it has the capacity to carry listeners away and hold them in thrall, while also triggering fierce surges of adrenaline.

Umbra also reflects changes in style since the band’s last release, the 2013 concept album Neogenesis. Gone are the symphonic arrangements and massed choral voices, yet even in the absence of these elements the music is still often shrouded in an aura of forbidding majesty — as well as implacable menace. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): KAMPFAR, AXIOMA, TODESSUCHT, HELLBRINGER

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 11 Responses »

Jul 042016

Yesterday I posted the first half of what was supposed to be a two-part post collecting recent advance tracks and full releases in a blackened vein that I wanted to recommend to you. When I finished Part 1, I had music from three more bands collected for Part 2. Sure enough, between then and now I found a lot more stuff that got me excited. And since we’re celebrating Independence Day here in the States, I might as well go big.

So, I’ve expanded this edition of Shades of Black into a three-part post, with the final segment coming tomorow. Please enjoy this jumbo fireworks display as we all strive for our own independence.

KAMPFAR

Kampfar previously released a fantastic video for one of the tracks (“Daimon”) from last year’s excellent Profan album (reviewed here), and today they premiered another one. This video is for “Tornekratt“, and to quote from the site that handled the premiere, it’s “a nightmare vision of the end of the world featuring a vast demon wielding a fiery whip over the last remnants of humanity, a grotesque take on the last supper, monolithic hooded deities serving judgement and all manner of cinematic suffering.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PEQUOD — “FALSE DIVINITY”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Jul 032016

“Explosive” is a good one-word summary of False Divinity, the new EP by Germany’s Pequod that’s set for release on July 5th. “Vortic-Death-Thrash”, which is the band’s own label for their music, is accurate, too. It is indeed a vortex of skull-crushing death metal and electrifying thrash, and as you’re about to find out through the full stream in this post, it includes other qualities that make it a lot of vicious fun to hear over and over again.

If you’re new to this band, we’re told that they first came to life in early 1998, and since then they’ve released a pair of demos, a self-titled EP in 2004, and a debut album named Forgotten in 2011. And because they chose the name of Captain Ahab’s whaling ship for their own name, Ahab can’t be considered the only German metal band with an affinity for Moby Dick. Continue reading »

DEATH RITUALS: VERBUM, OROBAS, AUM, TIDES OF SULFUR, UNCANNY REALITY

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Jul 012016

I meant to post this yesterday, but my job continues to mess with me. What I did here was to collect some new singles and a couple of new EPs that I found two nights ago while using the internet to crawl through the underground. I like all this stuff and thought you might also find something in here that strikes the right chord.

In this globe-trotting expedition the music consists mainly of various shades and phases of death metal (much of it “blackened”) by five bands, hence the title of this post.

VERBUM

Verbum are based in Chile, and their debut EP Processio Flagellates was originally released on tape by the Chilean label Penitenziagite Records, although it’s now also available as a download at Bandcamp. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: CONJURER — “I”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 4 Responses »

Jun 292016

(Andy Synn reviews the new EP by Conjurer, which will be released on July 1 by Holy Roar Records.)

We all know by now that hype can be a double-edged sword.

Certainly it can serve to drum up some necessary excitement and anticipation where it’s needed, there’s no denying that. But equally, it can set up unrealistic expectations that act like the proverbial albatross around a band’s collective neck, particularly in cases where certain blogs and magazines (and even the band’s own PR) keep throwing out sweeping comparisons and wild exaggerations as part of a veritable onslaught of hyperbole.

It can honestly leave you wondering whether to believe what you’re reading, or if it’s simply another example of puffed-up propaganda from the media group mind.

Birmingham-based quartet Conjurer (whose name you may have seen mentioned here at NCS once or twice before) have built up something of a buzz for themselves in the few short years they’ve been together, based almost entirely on the strength of their live performances.

And, as such, their debut EP, the ungooglable I, has a lot riding on it. Not only is it the band’s first chance to solidify their own sonic identity on record, but it’s also their first opportunity to prove whether or not all that hype and hyperbole floating around in the digital aether is actually justified.

So… do they deliver the goods? Or are they all mouth, and no trousers? Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): BLACK FUNERAL, WARFIST, VETURHEIM, REST, ALRUIN, ELK

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Jun 292016

Well, I’m two days late with this post. My original plan was to follow Part 1, which appeared on Sunday, with this Part 2 on Monday. But I got busy posting other things both Monday and Tuesday, and so here we are. Having delayed too long already, let’s just get right to the music….

BLACK FUNERAL

The Texas band Black Funeral was born from the mind of Michael W. Ford (aka Akhtya Nachttoter) in the mid-’90s, and although other members of the line-up have changed over time, Ford has persevered, releasing 8 albums that began with 1995’s Vampyr – Throne of the Beast. And this year, roughly six years after the last Black Funeral full-length, another one will be upon us in September via Iron Bonehead Productions and Dark Adversary. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ALMYRKVI — “PUPIL OF THE SEARING MAELSTROM”

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET 6 Responses »

Jun 282016

(In this post Andy Synn reviews the new EP by Iceland’s Almyrkvi, now available on Bandcamp.)

Black Metal has a long history of dealing with darkness in all its many forms… so it’s not surprising that so many of its adherents eventually turn their eyes towards the vast, vacant heavens and seek inspiration in the bleak emptiness of the void.

And so it is with Iceland’s Almyrkvi, the brainchild of Sinmara guitarist Garðar S. Jónsson, whose debut EP Pupil of the Searing Maelstrom seeks to capture the fearsome cold and endless nothngness of the celestial abyss in five impressively atmospheric and morbidly mesmerising tracks. Continue reading »

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