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 »
As you can see, this week’s SOB is very short. I had a late night out with my spouse and friends and a really long hibernation afterward. Also, not long from now, I’ll be heading out again to watch the broadcast of an inconsistent Seattle football team trying to beat a pretty bad New York football team. They’re playing in the East so it’s an early start here in the West.
The upshot is, I don’t have much time to write about music this morning. I thought about not trying to do anything with this column, but man, for 15 years and counting I’ve really hated to leave a void on any day at NCS.
With time short and too many things to choose from, I made the arguably bizarre decision to focus on the three black (or “blackened”) metal bands who e-mailed us most recently about their music – none of whom I knew anything about before listening. Purely by coincidence, all their names begin with “A“. Purely by coincidence, they all turned out to be good, in very different ways. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
I haven’t kept a running count, but I think a substantial majority of the music I’ve written about in these Sunday columns has consisted of singles, usually advance tracks from forthcoming albums. A couple of reasons for that:
First, I can put our spotlight on a lot more bands and records that way. In the time it would take me to listen to and scribble thoughts about one album, I can do that for pieces of six or seven albums.
Second, I don’t think I’m great at writing album reviews. I find it difficult to provide some kind of succinct discussion because I always feel like I’m leaving out important aspects of the music, and so I often get bogged down in the details. Even when an album is already out I feel that way, even though it might be a silly feeling since everyone can listen and discover the details for themselves.
All of that makes today’s collection a rarity, because today I’ve chosen to write about three albums that have already been released, and one new song (and video) that’s a bonus track for the vinyl edition of another album that’s already out. Continue reading »
I have to be brief today, because I’m compelled to leave home soon for a few hours. An appointment you really don’t want to hear about, and one I’ll be attending masked, in an effort not to infect people around me with my shitty cold. So, without further ado….
I think most NCS visitors know by now that we don’t report “the news”, i.e., announcements of new bands or records, if there’s no music streaming. There’s too many such announcements and too few of us. If there’s no music available yet, we just wait until there is, and then see if we think it’s worth recommending.
But there are exceptions to every rule, and I’m beginning with one. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
This column comes later in the day than usual, just like yesterday’s did. Yesterday’s was late because I went overboard with how much I tried to cover. Today’s is late because I spent a bunch of time this morning reading things that have nothing to do with music, still trying to process “current events”.
It’s also late because I still tried to cover as much as I could, though not quite as overboard as yesterday. Like yesterday I’ve alternated between recent singles and complete new records, and at the end I’ve added a couple of new videos for songs that aren’t new, though in different ways they’ve been made new again. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
I included a fair share of black metal in Part I of yesterday’s large cross-genre roundup despite having this column looming in the near distance. I did that on purpose because the bulk of the verbiage below (and it is bulky) is devoted to an album that doesn’t really fit the usual bill on Sundays, or any other bill, though I have my reasons for including it here.
Yet fear not, ye black metal zealots, because I’m following the opening act with some music that will be more in line with this column’s typical focus, though some of it gets out of line too. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
I guess it’s obvious from the size of this weekend’s two-part Saturday roundup that I had more than the usual amount of NCS time yesterday and this morning, and therefore kind of lost my mind.
I have only a small amount of mind and time left at this point, so today’s SHADES OF BLACK is so brief it could be labeled a token effort. But I didn’t want to skip it altogether, especially because, although the recommendations are few in number, they still loom large in the remnants of my head. Continue reading »
Sordide, photo by Jeremy Tiercelin
(written by Islander)
Over the past week I added an even 30 new songs or complete releases to my list of black and blackish metal that I wanted to check out in building today’s column. That was on top of how the list stood a week ago, already wobbly from its ungainly height.
As usual, I didn’t have time to check out all 30. In a handful of instances, I defaulted to previously proven names. For others, I had dependable recommendations. And for others, I went exploring, based on glimpses of one thing or another (artwork, lineup, location, conceptual framework) that I thought were interesting.
Here’s what came out at the end of the sifting, with the choices due in part to how the music fit together in my head, sometimes complementing and sometimes contrasting. Continue reading »
“Tenterhooks” is an exceptional word, even though I’m confident I’ve never used it in any conversation and even though it hasn’t appeared in a single one of our 15,889 life-to-date posts before this one (a suspicion confirmed by a computerized search of our entire site).
In its original meaning, which dates back to at least the 1600s, a “tenterhook” was a hooked nail used to affix washed woven fabrics to a wooden frame called a “tenter”, on which the woolen cloth could dry outdoors — stretched, straightened, and under tension. But, as The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us, “By the mid-18th century, the phrase on tenterhooks came to mean being in a state of tension, uneasiness, anxiety, or suspense, i.e., figuratively stretched like the cloth on the tenter.”
Why did this word pop into my head today? Well, because some of the music below put me on tenterhooks, and expressing those feelings in any other way would seem slightly drab by comparison, when the music itself is definitely not drab. (By coincidence, “drab” is another old English word dating back to the 1600s which also had something to do with woven cloth; it was the name for undyed, homespun wool with colors that were dull brown, yellowish, or gray.) Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
As I did in yesterday’s weekend roundup, for today’s column I’ve chosen a mix of complete new releases and advance tracks from forthcoming records. I’ve also consciously mixed up the musical styles, all of which use black metal as a touchstone but throw other stones at us as well. At the end I’ve also embedded three new videos without commentary; they’re all worth seeing and hearing, even though I haven’t tried to explain why.
P.S. In certain parts of the Christian world today is Michaelmas, feast day of the archangel Michael, who is celebrated for casting the Devil from Heaven. The Devil has had a celebrated career on Earth since then, as today’s music helps prove. Today is also probably the birthday of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the author of Don Quixote, which will always inspire its readers to continue tilting at windmills, which thankfully all of today’s bands are doing. Continue reading »