SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): RAUHNÅCHT, VARATHRON, ILLUM ADORA

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Oct 232018
 

 

As explained on Sunday, the surprise release of the new Kriegsmaschine album de-railed my plans for the regular SHADES OF BLACK column, causing me to move the music I’d originally picked into the second part of what had suddenly become a two-part post. And for other reasons I won’t both you with, I couldn’t finish Part 2 on Sunday. Once the whirlwind of Monday began, I couldn’t finish it for yesterday either.

There was a lot of new music I had planned for Part 2, including three full releases — and I still haven’t finished writing about those, given the volume of premieres I’ve been writing about yesterday and today. Rather than delay further, I’m just going to include the individual tracks and videos from Part 2 here and come back to the full albums as soon as I can.

RAUHNÅCHT

My interest in folk metal, which many years ago was once eager, became nearly moribund when I felt like I was hearing very similar Celtic melodies over and over again, regardless of what country they were coming from. Granted, the original Celts spread their culture over a wide swath of Europe, from what we’d now call “The British Isles” to what we now call Turkey. Still, the sameness of the music began to grow tiresome, or maybe I just wasn’t exploring as much as I should have. I still prize ethnic melodies when they’re less familiar to my ears, but in general I’m at the point when I’m hard to win over. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): KRIEGSMASCHINE — “APOCALYPTICISTS”

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Oct 212018
 

 

I slept much later than usual this morning, and to compound the problems that created for my NCS duties, I had barely started writing today’s SHADES OF BLACK column before bedding down for the night, though I had at least finished the job of picking what I wanted to write about. And then when I finally did rouse myself from what seemed like a deep hibernation and had inhaled a gallon of coffee, I decided to take a quick peak at Facebook before turning back to today’s column.

And the first thing I saw was a pair of messages from two generous sources of musical recommendations, starkweather’s Rennie and my Serbian acquaintance Miloš, both of whom were pointing me to a big surprise that did far more to set my nerve endings alight that all that coffee I had poured into myself: Without warning, No Solace released a new Kriegsmaschine album today. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: WELTSCHMERZ, DEWFALL, MAGOTH, PANDISCORDIAN NECROGENESIS

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Oct 142018
 

 

For this Sunday’s column I’ve picked music from four bands we’ve never previously written about at NCS. Three are advance tracks from forthcoming records, and one is a complete new album, released just yesterday.

WELTSCHMERZ

To begin, I’ve chosen a song from the second album by a band who, despite their German name (which seems to mean “world-pain” or “world-weariness”), are Dutch. We’re further informed that weltschmerz “is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind”. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: KJELD, HOMSELVAREG, DEATHHAMMER

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Oct 082018
 

 

You may have noticed that we had no new posts at the site this past weekend — no Waxing Lyrical interview, no Shades of Black column, and nothing else. But rest easy — we are, in fact, still alive and well.

Mr. Synn played Mammothfest with his band Beyond Grace, and I spent the weekend in southern New Mexico at an annual outing of the business I work for when I’m not doing NCS stuff, and so neither of us had time to handle our usual weekend responsibilities. I guess I should have said something about these plans, in order to avoid the severe anxiety and heartbreak that our absence must have caused among the millions who looked for us and found nothing but the final post from last Friday.

My own activities not only prevented me from writing anything this weekend, they also prevented me from listening to as much new metal as I usually do on the weekends. I’ve got a shitload of catching up to do, which I’m thinking is a practical impossibility since I’m sitting here looking at the schedule of 11 song and album premieres I need to write this week, including the two coming today. But I will at least do this Shades of Black post, even if a day later than expected and even if the reviews are pitifully brief for music of such blazing power. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GROZA, DRATNA, A FLOCK NAMED MURDER, SLEGEST, HISSING, SOLAR TEMPLE, FLUISTERAARS, TURIA

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Sep 302018
 

 

I struggle with these picks every week, and resolve the struggle in different ways. Sometimes, when I’ve got the time, I double-up the column so I don’t have to leave out quite as many possibilities. I don’t have that kind of time today. And to make the task harder, a lot of the music I wanted to talk about today turns out to be extra time-consuming — full releases, really long songs, many minutes that don’t lend themselves to pithy introductions.

Days like this I’m reminded that the main value of what we do here is “curation” (to use a pretentious term), i.e., the sifting and sorting of music and the selection of what we find appealing and think might be worth the time of people like you. If the writing itself proves to be entertaining, that’s a bonus. Mainly, we just do that to entertain ourselves. Hopefully, the curation alone will carry the day today — my own words are limited to begin with and kind of tail off into tiny dribbles the further you get into this.

GROZA

My friend eiterorm found Groza’s new album on Friday, said it was obviously inspired by Mgła, and expressed completely certainty that I would like it, judging from our common tastes in metal. “So make sure this one gets top priority. ;-]”, he wrote. So I did, and my friend was right — this is really good. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (HGD EDITION): BÂ’A, CULT OF EIBON, CAEDES CRUENTA, ISKANDR, RODENT EPOCH, SORCIER DES GLACES

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Sep 232018
 

 

(While our editor is on vacation this weekend, our ally HGD has generously stepped into the void and gathered the following collection of new black metal to recommend to you.)

Bâ’a

The best part of putting together a collection like this one is being able to discover hidden diamonds in the rough, especially those that appear out of the blue with little warning. The atmospheric black metal band Bâ’a is a prime example of this.

The scant details provided to Black Metal Promotion as a part of the upload of their single “Les Terres de Terreur“, seems to indicate that they hail from France, but there is no information about their membership. The band appears disinclined towards the use of social media as well, with no presence on Facebook or Bandcamp, seemingly preferring to let their music speak for them. After listening to this track, it’s not hard to see why. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): ULTHAR, ANCST, KRODA, DEPTHS ABOVE, GORYCZ

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Sep 162018
 

 

Unlike most of the music I chose for Part 1 of today’s collection, black metal isn’t the dominant ingredient in everything I’ve included in this second Part, though it always plays a role. I’ve segmented these five choices by design, with some connections I hear between the first two, and some different connections between the last two, and some HelCarpathian Black Metal in the middle.

ULTHAR

Ulthar‘s 2016 debut demo made quite a vivid impression on me, which I likened to “the musical equivalent of rabid wolves in a feeding frenzy”. Of that demo I further wrote: “The focal core of Ulthar’s music is corrosive, distorted, head-ramming, d-beat crust, but they spread out from there, incorporating bestial death bellows and deranged shrieking along with massive, spine-shattering chugs, violent blackened riff swarms, and melodically dismal and alien slower passages”. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): CARPE NOCTEM, CRIMSON THRONE, AKVAN, PURE WRATH, NOCTEM AETERNUS

 SHADES OF BLACK  10 Responses »
Sep 162018
 

 

As you can see, I had enough time yesterday and this morning to pick twice the usual number of selections for this Sunday’s column. Maybe this will make up for the likelihood that there will be no S.O.B. column next week because this SOB will be going on a short vacation next weekend with Ms. Islander and some friends.

Although I had time to assemble a two-part collection this week, that only somewhat eased the agony of picking from among such a massive number of deserving advance tracks and new releases. I wish I could have done more.

CARPE NOCTEM

I christened May 2012 “Iceland Metal Month“, calling attention to a series of posts I wrote which exclusively focused on metal bands from Iceland, a country that I wrote was “starting to seem close to Finland in the ratio of killer metal bands per capita of population”. Now, almost five and a half years later, it no longer seems like a close call, particularly in the genre of black metal. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: MALTHUSIAN, VALDUR, SPEARHEAD, LORDS OF THE CEMETERY, HOT GRAVES

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Sep 092018
 

 

The music I’ve picked for this week’s column is among the shades of black that shade into death metal, or vice-verse, depending on the stylistic ingredients that you think are more dominant. But while “blackened death metal” might be a suitable description for some of this music, that label doesn’t fit all of it, at least as I think most listeners interpret the term.

All but one of the bands in this collection are old favorites of mine who are returning with new music, sometimes after extended absences; one is a new discovery. I’ll add that this weekend has been a busy one for me (busy with non-NCS activities), so I’m hurrying to get this done before I have to turn again to other stuff. Which means I’m having to cut short my usual rhetorical embellishments, and mainly let the music sell itself.

MALTHUSIAN

After two powerful previous releases, the MMXIII demo in 2013 and the stellar 2015 EP Below the Hengiform (which we had the privilege of premiering), the Irish black/death band Malthusian will at last release a full-length this year. Across Deaths is set for release on September 28th by Dark Descent Records and Invictus Productions.  Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): YOVEL, ETERNAL SACRIFICE, AVAST, HULDREKALL, SPEKTRAL HATCHERY, S.E.K.H.

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Sep 032018
 

 

It’s Labor Day here in the U.S. today, which won’t mean much or anything to half the people who visit our site. For those people, who don’t live here, it’s a holiday designed to celebrate the American labor movement. For me, it’s just another laboring day at NCS, though of course it feels more like fun than work or you can be damned sure I wouldn’t be doing it.

This is the second Part of a column I began yesterday, which I hope you’ll check out if you haven’t, because there’s a lot of good music there as well as here.

YOVEL

Although I mostly focus these columns on new or forthcoming releases, I’m stepping back in time for the first recommendation today. I overlooked this album when it was released on April 1st of this year, but was called back to it through a recent e-mail we received. The first track was seductive; the second track spun the turbine in my head into the red zone. Continue reading »

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