SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): MORK, AGRYPNIE, TOTALITARIAN, LYKHAEON

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Jun 272021
 


photo by Terje Johansen

 

You might have noticed that I didn’t publish the usual Saturday round-up yesterday. I’ll spare you the reasons, but will say that I spent hours going through dozens of new songs and videos that I’d added to my enormous listening list over the last week. Some of those were black metal songs of different styles. I made some hard choices about which of those to include in this usual Sunday column, but still wound up with enough for a two-parter.

What you’ll find in Part 1 are four new videos, two of them for songs from releases that have been out in the world for a while and two of them for tracks off forthcoming albums.

MORK

I learned about the first video through a press release by Peaceville Records that arrived yesterday. I had to scroll through lots of text and photos about Darkthrone’s new album before coming to the Mork news, and I haven’t yet seen any reports about the video on social media or elsewhere. Maybe I’m jumping the gun a bit in writing about it, but the press release treated the video as something that had already premiered, so it seems fair game. I assume word will spread further on Monday.

The song featured in the video, “Født Til Å Herske”, happens to be one of my favorites on Mork’s newest album, Katedralen, which is packed with strong songs. “Født Til Å Herske” includes a guest vocal appearance by Kampfar’s Dolk (who also appears in this video), and the additional tonal texture and feeling he adds to the song is one reason why it stands out to me. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: HEGEMON, ADOPERTA TENEBRIS, CORPUS DIAVOLIS

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Jun 202021
 

 

Did you think there would be no SHADES OF BLACK today? If so, you were very nearly right. I had a repeat of the Friday-night/Saturday-morning experience which I reported in yesterday’s video roundup: going out with a big group of friends last night, staying up really late, overindulging intoxicants, and sleeping like a hibernating bear until very little was left of this morning. I nearly decided to just abandon this column for one Sunday. But the old NCS obsessive-compulsive disorder finally wouldn’t allow that.

So what did I hurriedly decide to do? I decided to pick three new songs off a giant sampler released on Friday by Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER, AKVAN, IDOLOS, SKOGNATT, TRNA

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Jun 132021
 

 

Sadly, I’m hurrying to complete this Sunday’s collection because, not so sadly, I slept much later than usual. I didn’t get much of a head start on the column yesterday, so the preponderance of the effort was left to these rapidly waning morning hours. Fortunately, as always, you’ll have the music streams, which are more important than my too-meager words anyway.

As bookends for the collection I’ve chosen advance tracks from forthcoming records, and in the middle are three complete new releases.

DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER (Germany)

The opening song I’ve chosen, “Ymir“, combines dismal chords and sprightly, pinging keys, a skipping kind of march and a hammering gallop, nasty growls and scorching screams. The music becomes panoramic and magisterial, and flickering guitars give it bursts of ebullience, but the music’s overarching moods are ominous and anguished. The accompanying video is fascinating. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MAYHEM, DARKTHRONE, NECRONAUTICAL, EXITIUM SUI, SEA MOSQUITO, HAPLESS WRETCH, UNDERDARK

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Jun 062021
 

 

I nearly didn’t include the new Mayhem and Darkthrone songs in this column, because I thought anyone who would visit us today would have already heard them. Plus, as is generally true of NCS as a whole, I tend to focus on less-heralded bands than the ones whose names are household words. On the other hand, those are two of black metal’s most influential bands, and getting new songs from both of them in the same week seems like something especially noteworthy, especially for a column like this one. So, they’re both here.

After that I shifted the focus to more obscure names, and by coincidence almost all of them are UK groups.

MAYHEM (NORWAY)

Atavistic Black Disorder/Kommando is a Mayhem EP that will be released on July 9th by Century Media. The dual title signifies that the EP includes three original tracks (“Voces Ab Alta,” “Black Glass Communion,” and “Everlasting Dying Flame”) as well as covers of classic punk tracks from Discharge (“In Defense Of Our Future”, Dead Kennedys (“Hellnation”), Rudimentary Peni (“Only Death”), and the Ramones (“Commando”). The song that emerged last week is one of those original tracks, which was initially recorded during the band’s Daemon sessions. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: RITUAL MOON, GRINNING DEATH’S HEAD, PA VESH EN, GROZA, AAMON, GLIMT, THRON, OPPRESS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
May 302021
 


Ritual Moon

 

Especially after yesterday’s humongous round-up it probably wasn’t smart for me to follow it with another one, but that’s what I’ve done. As you’ve probably figured out by now, careful thinking and reflection never have much to do with my NCS contributions. Impulse and enthusiasm tend to rule the day.

RITUAL MOON (U.S.)

I had intended to fully explore this L.A. band’s January 2021 debut album after listening to an advance track many months ago, but never got back to it until my comrade DGR recently posted about it. He figured it would be up my alley. It definitely is. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: VALAIS, ABKEHR, VREXIZA, MURKDWELLER

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
May 232021
 

 

You may have noticed that for the last three days in a row I had time to create some pretty large round-ups of new songs and videos. But the time I found to do such things eventually ran out, and so this Sunday column of blackened sounds isn’t as extensive as I had hoped. in subsequent posts over the coming week I will endeavor to include other choices I made for today, but didn’t have time to write about.

Still, you won’t go away hungry today, because the following four choices include two full albums and a complete EP, as well as one advance track.

VALAIS (Ireland)

I don’t know much about this new project, and I’m not sure I’m free to disclose what little I do know beyond the apparent fact that it’s based in Dublin. So, until more info becomes public (if it ever does), we’ll have to let the music speak for itself. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MUR, GRAVEOLENCE, GOMGOMA

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
May 162021
 

 

Obviously, I didn’t make the usual Saturday round-up of new songs and videos yesterday. I was victimized by a combination of too much partying the night before and too much work for my fucking day job. This Shades of Black column is also a bit out of the ordinary. I tend to focus on brand new releases and advance tracks from forthcoming records, but today I’m playing catch-up, calling attention to three albums I’ve been enjoying which came out in March or April. And none of these releases is unadulterated black metal — in fact, the “blackening” is often minimal — though the other ingredients in these amalgams differ from band to band.

(I’ll also mentioned that Panopticon’s new album is out now in digital form, and you should go listen to it here; I already spewed a bunch of words about it in mid-April.)

MUR

This French band’s new record, Truth, is classified as an EP, but it’s more than 30 minutes long, and it’s a great way to spend a half-hour, as long as your’re not a rigid genre purist. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BEASTLOR, I AM THE NIGHT, VERHEERER, DODSKOLD, ASCEND TOWARDS THE MOON, WICHER, BALMOG

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
May 092021
 

 

I think it’s fair to say that I’ve gone off the deep end. Between the new-music round-ups I prepared on Friday and Saturday and the column you’re now staring at, I’ve thrown out 28 advance tracks, EPs, or albums, almost all of which surfaced just within the last week or two. I don’t expect any normal person to pay attention to all of it, and I don’t really know how any normal person would pick and choose among all those tracks. So why have I done this? Don’t know… still waiting on the psychiatric evaluations….

BEASTLOR (U.S.)

I decided to begin with one of the two complete albums in today’s collection. It landed, fully formed and without warning, on the most recent Bandcamp Friday, two days ago. As you can see, I didn’t defer paying attention to it, because the man behind it is Mick Barr (of Krallice and Encenathrakh). Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): THY DARKENED SHADE, AMESTIGON, INCONCESSUS LUX LUCIS, SHAARIMOTH, VAINA

 SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
May 032021
 

 

Part 2 of this week’s Shades of Black isn’t as voluminous as Part 1 was. I had two objectives in making it: First, to give some early attention to a four-way split many of us have been eagerly awaiting for a very long time; and second, to follow through in recommending an album I had originally intended to include in Part 2 of last week’s column, but had to cut because I ran out of time.

SAMAELILITH: A CONJUNCTION OF THE FIREBORN

The long-awaited split is SamaeLilith: A Conjunction of the Fireborn, and it combines the prodigious talents of four groups we’ve been writing about with admiration for years: Thy Darkened Shade (Greece), Amestigon (Austria), Inconcessus Lux Lucis (UK), and Shaarimoth (Norway). It will be released on June 30th by W.T.C. Productions.

Each band contributed multiple tracks to the split, ranging from three to five, for a total of more than an hour and a half of music spread across 15 songs. Although I’ve been fortunate to recently receive the complete album, this isn’t something I want to rush into just in order to publish one of the first reviews. Just counting the minutes alone, there’s a lot to take in, and if past is prologue, one hurried listen to what these bands have done here won’t do their efforts justice either. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ANAPILIN, PRÉSAGES, SXUPERION, ZGARD, TRHÄ, MORTIFERO, ZWEISPALT, VULTURE LORD, NUCLEAR REVENGE

 SHADES OF BLACK  7 Responses »
May 022021
 

 

Part 1 of today’s column is in the vein of the giant round-up I prepared yesterday — a lot of music and not a lot of words. Though the music is of course “in the vein” of black metal, or at least in spiritual/aesthetic kinship with it (according to my own perceptions), you won’t find any two bands here that sound like they were raised in the same litter.

Part 2, which may appear later today or may appear tomorrow (because I haven’t written it yet), is devoted to four songs from a forthcoming (and long-awaited) four-way split, and a frightening album I meant to include in this column last week before I ran out of time.

ANAPILIN (Lithuania)

Rennie (of starkweather) pointed me to the song and lyric video I’ve chosen to lead with. At that time, it was apparent that an album by these gas-masked Lithuanians was on the way, but neither of us could find a name for it or a release date.

Those mysteries were solved this morning when the album just dropped out of the sky, fully formed. But by the time I awakened and saw Rennie’s message about the full release, I didn’t have time enough to listen to it, so I’m sticking with the original plan of focusing just on the one song and video — but including the full stream as well. Continue reading »

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