SHADES OF BLACK: HORDOUS, TSALAL

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Oct 232022
 

 

This week’s SHADES OF BLACK is shorter than usual, and follows a rare blank space at our site on Saturday, but this whole weekend has been out of the ordinary.

I used to joke that my day job was operating as a drug mule and/or a secret adviser to world leaders desperate for solutions. In fact it’s more mundane that either of those. But it has led to an anything-but-mundane weekend.

This weekend the business I work for pulled together everyone from its offices in four cities for a retreat on the Pacific coast of southern California. A swanky location, a minimum of boring speeches, good food, free-flowing alcohol, lots of congenial bonding. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: KANONENFIEBER, SKÁLA

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Oct 162022
 

Have you had your daily dose of whining and excuse-making? If not, I can remedy that, free of charge.

I went to a baseball playoff game in Seattle last night, except it unexpectedly turned into two games in one, lasting 18 innings. Arriving at the ballpark at 11:30 a.m., my spouse and I left at 7:30 p.m., hungry and tired and not feeling great about the 1-0 loss our team ultimately suffered. So we stayed in Seattle to eat and drink, and after a dreary ferry trip we didn’t make it back to the NCS island HQ until late.

This morning, which started late, I spent a lot more time going through about 400 previously un-read e-mails lodged in the NCS in-box than I did listening to anything. But although the day is now rapidly getting away from me, and my day job is now intruding, I wanted to do something so I wouldn’t pass through yet another Sunday with no Shades of Black. It’s not a lot, obviously, and I made the choices hurriedly (before getting immersed in historical research), but I think you’ll still be well-pleased, even if not thoroughly sated. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): ARALLU, MORD’A’STIGMATA, LIGHTLORN, HEIDEN, VIKVANIR, SECOND TO SUN, UNFYROS

 Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Oct 032022
 


Arallu

As I forecast in Part 1 of this column yesterday, Part 2 takes us off in some unusual directions. Much of the time black metal is still in the mix, but in most of the songs featured here it’s more of a jumping-off point to other wide-ranging experiences than it is the rigid core of the music — or it’s not present at all, except perhaps as a sinister spirit that hovers on the edges.

This excursion will be welcomed by some of you, and some of the songs will probably disgruntle others. But there’s only one way to find out, and that’s to expose yourself to the music. I hope you’ll do that with all the tracks here, all of which are from forthcoming albums or EPs.

ARALLU (Israel)

This long-running Israeli band, whose roots are in the late ’90s, will be releasing a new album (their 8th one overall) in November. With the imposing title of Death Covenant, it follows up the excellent En Olam from three years ago. I’ve already written here about one of the new album’s advance tracks, “Desert Shadows Will Rise“, and now we have another one. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): NOCTEM, LUCIFERICON, NOCTURNIS, SIRRUSH, PYRA, SHEOL BLANC

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Oct 022022
 


Noctem

I failed to get one of these columns done last Sunday, so I decided to go big today. I was able to spend hours yesterday listening, making choices, and beginning to write. From the windows, it looked like a beautiful day outside my home, but that’s as close as I got to it.

I made 13 choices, and 6 of them are in Part 1. Thirteen selections of music seems like too much to lay on anyone in a single day, particularly a weekend day, so I’m saving Part 2 for tomorrow. But I’ll give you a quick explanation about how I divided the choices:

Until you get to the last song, Part 1 is basically an inferno; the music in Part 2 goes off in a number of unusual directions that probably won’t please the trve and kvlt among you, but may intrigue others. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GEVURAH, SPIDER GOD, BELIAL HORDE, AU CLAIRE DE LUNE, VÉVAKI, SECRET STAIRWAYS

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Sep 182022
 

To save time (yours and mine), I’ll dispense with the usual windy introduction and say only that some of the choices I made this week stretch the admittedly elastic musical bounds of this column, and eventually wind up completely outside them… but that doesn’t happen right away, as you’ll soon see.

GEVURAH (Canada)

Gevurah probably need no introduction to our visitors, or to anyone else who wants to feel consumed by fire when listening to black metal. As I’ve observed both in the case of their 2016 debut album Hallelujah! (which we premiered and reviewed here) and their 2018 EP Sulphur Soul (discussed here), Gevurah are devoted to the fierce power of chaos, and the unrelenting intensity of their music can be overwhelming. Based on the first song from their forthcoming second album, they’ve not moderated their stance. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: CIEMRA, TERRA

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Sep 112022
 


Ciemra

 

I had visitors from Atlanta yesterday (not Atlantis – those friends have a longer swim), and that visit included a trip to the ballpark to watch the Mariners beat the Braves. I didn’t gloat too much, and my friends were pretty stoic in accepting their home team’s loss, since their team won the first game of the series the night before.

However, by the time I made it back to my island home and got to bed, the clock had struck midnight. And by the time I woke up this morning to view another sunrise dismally cloaked in wildfire smoke, a big chunk of the early day was already gone. And then I remembered an imminent outing my spouse had planned. So there’s really not much time to give this column.

I thought about not writing anything, but didn’t want to foment anxiety among the throngs who might worry that my house had been struck by a meteor or ruined by a long-awaited reappearance of the Great Old Ones. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ADAESTUO, VOLLOÍOM, HYNGWAR, VOAK

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Sep 042022
 

For this Sunday’s column I’ve included three complete releases and one from a forthcoming album. I venture to say that you’ll find the first two releases formidably frightening and the third one more head-hooking and heart-exploding, while the advance track is an amalgam that’s fiery, feral, and defiant.

ADAESTUO (International)

I’ve written with admiration about all three of Adaestuo’s previous releases — the 2016 debut EP Tacent Semitae and the band’s two albums, Krew za krew (2018) and Manalan virrat (2020). So there was no chance I wouldn’t make the dive into Purge of the Night Cloak, a new EP they released just last week, but which seems to consist of recordings conceived in 2016 and first made in 2020. They describe it as an effort “to bring the intrepid beholder into a more Faustian Gnosis”. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ENSLAVED, THE LOOM OF TIME, PANYCHIDA, ASGRAUW, CAÏNAN DAWN, IMPLORE, TRUP

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Aug 282022
 

I had a lot of uninterrupted listening time over the last couple of days. For this column, that proved to be both a blessing and a curse — a blessing because it enabled me to wade through a broad swath of new music, a curse because what I found that I wanted to recommend after a lot of winnowing was still A LOT. So, today’s collection may test your endurance.

Coincidentally (or maybe not so coincidentally), there’s a lot of sheer dazzling madness in this collection. I tried to interweave some less insane but still gripping experiences, but it’s nevertheless likely that if you do make your way through everything here, your head will be spinning for a long time after. Today’s music also demonstrates why I called this column “Shades” of black, because there’s not much black metal orthodoxy here.

ENSLAVED (Norway)

I was dubious about the idea of starting the column with a new Enslaved song, because they’re rightfully famous and don’t need any help from us, and because I’ve not fallen in love with their more recent releases to the extent I did with earlier ones. But those doubts were in place before I listened to this new single. After hearing it I thought, how can I NOT begin with it? Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SIGH, ORM, VETER DAEMONAZ, SWARN

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Aug 142022
 

After three days of cruising along with lots of time to devote to NCS I ran into a wall. The demands of my fucking day job are unpredictable and weekends aren’t any more sacrosanct than they are at this site. So I had to work yesterday and this morning. You just never know when people will urgently need a delivery of toilet paper.

I finally did manage to squeeze in some listening and some writing for this weekly column, just so it wouldn’t completely go missing, but it’s shorter and more hurried than I wanted it to be.

SIGH (Japan)

To begin, we have a video for the song “Satsui” from the forthcoming 12th album by the remarkable (and long-lived) Japanese band Sigh. It’s the kind of song that’s capable of hooking people damned hard and damned fast. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ISKANDR, EXCURSE, DAEMON OF OA, GONEMAGE

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Aug 072022
 

Someday I’ll finally learn the lesson that predicting in print what I’m going to do at NCS from one day to the next is stupid. On Friday I put together a roundup of new music that I described as a way to lessen the load for the roundup I was going to compile for Saturday. And then of course I wrote nothing on Saturday.

The wreckage of that plan was the result of embarrassing misbehavior on Friday night, so it would be even more stupid for me to share details. Last night’s misbehavior was less ruinous, so I was able to get this usual Sunday column finished. It’s not as extensive as I’d hoped it would be, but at least not another complete failure.

I’ll forecast for you that in choosing the following tracks, I wandered well off the usual beaten paths.

ISKANDR (Netherlands)

In the early fall of last year I had the pleasure of premiering what was then the third full-length by this formidable Dutch duo. Looking back on what I wrote, I was a bit dumbfounded by how many words I spilled by way of introduction. Continue reading »

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